


Objects in Space

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Dissociation, Drug Addiction, F/M, M/M, Past Torture, Prostitution, Psychological Trauma, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-01-12 15:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 78,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18449114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Davey Macquarie is a strung-out junkie on a decrepit seeding ship somewhere deep in space.Daniel Marsden is the dead man hunting him.And one of them isn't going to survive this.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This weird story has been hanging around on my hard drive for a while now, and it's a little bit weird and a lot strange. It'd take a lot to actually make it publishable as a commercial work, probably, so I'm just going to leave it here.
> 
> Literally a good chunk this story takes place in the footnotes. I don't even know what to tell you about that nonsense.

 

 

 

The climb was the epic thing, heroic and brave, and would have grown in the telling if there was anyone that could tell it, but there was no one except for Splayfingers, who never saw how it ended, and Macquarie himself, who did the climbing but would take the secret of how he managed it to his grave, along with all the other secrets that simmered in his brain. The only thing certain about the climb is that it began deep in the fetid darkness of the Rats’ Nest, and ended somewhere in the ventilation shafts under the old Crewman Quarter when Macquarie felt the first breath of clean air against his face, pushed out the last of the rusted grates with his bleeding fingers, and found himself back in the world again.

 

 

 

_These are the things he thought:_

Here we are again. Back in the world, and it’s been a long while. Long enough, I reckon. Didn’t count the hours down in the dark though. Couldn’t. Could hardly keep my head straight for the tick-tick footsteps of the Rats and the whispering in the walls, but back up here the air is clean and fresh and cool, and all that shit’s out of my head again. Can almost think straight even, and that’s been a while as well.

Nothing changes but perspective.

Fuck me, but it’s cold in the light. Must have gone native in the dark, gotten used to the humidity, hot breath and clammy touch, deep in the pit with the killers and the peds and the predators and all the things they bred between them. Light is cold, and it hurts my eyes.

Well, here we are again. Thought about this a lot down in the dark, half afraid it wouldn’t be here when I climbed up to find it. But here it is, and here I am, and the cold light makes me shiver. Feel it on my skin like a hand that strokes and strokes and makes me come alive.

Yeah. Want it all now. A feed, a fix and a fuck.

 

 

 

The world is bigger than he remembers, more crowded. Faces flash past him. He knocks shoulders with strangers in narrow thoroughfares. He feels overwhelmed, and it is the noise that makes him sick. There is too much noise at once. It vibrates in his gut and rises in his throat. People talking, shouting, laughing, screaming. Too many people.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

It’s cold in the light, and loud as well, like I’ve been living underwater. Stepped free of it now, and the air has stripped my warmth away. Shake the water out of my ears and I can hear the raucous sounds like gulls cutting through the bruised sky.

Just a few minutes, just a few deep breaths, and you’ll find your way again.

 

 

 

He finds the hub where he remembers, but most of the faces have changed. Macquarie feels a flicker of doubt, but shakes it off. He is owed this. He promised himself this. Three years of enforced withdrawal might have kept him clean, but they couldn’t make him hate the habit. He has made the deal with himself, and he isn’t going back on it now. _Make it out of the Rats’ Nest, and you can have whatever you want._ He has earned it.

 

 

 

_And he thought:_

And music. I want music to feel like a human, music with life and height and need. Want to suffer the human condition. Feeling and needing, the piteous ache of it stretched and laid out over grey little lives.

I want to hear Callas again, to soar to the high places. 1 Carry me further into the light.

It’s too cold here. Need to find somewhere to hole up.

Wonder how long it’s been. Wonder if all the old places are still here, still secret, still safe. Wonder if they can even be found from here, when my head’s not together and my body shakes from wanting those three things, maybe just maybe four, and I don’t know how many years it’s been since I set my feet on these ways.

Laborious ways.

A lifetime ago I stood here last, and here we are again. Here _I_ am. Got to get my head together. Just me now, and no one else and I really am alone this time, now he’s gone along with all the rest. I never thought he’d leave. Didn’t think he knew how. And I can’t follow where he’s set his feet on laborious ways.

Crossed swords against your name.

Maybe there’s some untouched place, hermetic, airless, where the names of the fallen are etched. A secret shrine in the heart of all decay, where just his name survives, and nobody sees it and nobody remembers it and nobody ever knew it at all.  

Fuck him. Daniel Marsden fucked up. He deserved to die.

Here I am again.

Don’t know if I can find my way from here. Streets all look the same anyhow. Nothing changes except perspective, and here I am in the gutter wrapped in the stench of it. Used to watch it from above. Used to dream of it from below. Caught in it now.

Wonder what it looks like from the outside.

Used to hole up and dream the last time I was here, back when my head was clearer.

I dreamed that I was born a thousand years ago, and I found myself adrift in the night on the wide dark sea, and there was no wind and no clouds and no moon, and the sea was flat and smooth like black glass, the gleaming surface of an opal, and there were endless stars above and endless stars below, and I couldn’t tell which were real and which were reflections, and I drifted there, wrapped in stars.

Back when my head was clearer, filtering out the thoughts that shoot from all directions towards me and land like whip cracks in my skull. _Crack. Crack. Crack._ Make my eyes twitch every time. 

Talk to yourself. Split yourself. Talk to yourself like you’re someone else. Use your own name in your own mind, like you hate yourself, like you mock yourself. Never ever say, _I remember._ Always say, _Remember that, Macquarie?_

“You know what we are, Davey?” Roberts said one time, when you were holed up snug, lying low with a bottle of vodka.

“What are we?” That was you. Remember that, Macquarie? 

“Giant killers!” Roberts laughed. “We’re fucking giant killers!”

And you took a swig of vodka that warmed your guts, and you smiled. You thought: _In a week I will be far away from here. In a week I will be clean. In a week I will be warm. In a week I will be a human being again. I will eat three meals a day. I will have money to spend. I will see her again, and in a week it will be the good days_.    

Remember that, Macquarie? Well, here we are again.

Good days. They came thick and fast at one time, but lately have trickled away into memories. The good days and the glory days. You owned the world at one time, when you were clever and fast and young. Not so much anymore. Can’t catch a break these days, you’re always coming from behind. 

_I drown all regrets._

Shake it off. Shake it off with shivering flesh and twitches. Keep it together.

A fix. Want a fix. You can have it. You are owed it. Make it happen.

 

 

 

And in the same places that he left him, Macquarie found Leshenko and a warm welcome, and made himself new glory days and found his place in the world again. And the hours bled into days and weeks and the need of it twisted into his guts and burrowed there like a parasite.

Funny how simple life can get, boiled away to bare bones, with nothing at all but just the clothes he’s standing in: his boots, his cargoes, his t-shirt and nothing much else besides. He’s richer than most of the junkies he meets in those clouded weeks. Not nothing but skin and bones. Not quite that filthy. Not yet that wretched. He’s handsomer too, and cleverer, so he doesn’t starve and he doesn’t dry out. 2

Funny how simple life is stripped away to its most basic bodily needs. Food, shelter, and Agex. Uncomplicated and liberating. A hand to mouth existence, day to day, minute to minute.

Everything else has fallen away. None of it meant anything anyway.  

(He only feels this free on Agex. Coming down, he’s desolate.)

But then five weeks into the world again, maybe six, and Macquarie found himself in a moment of itching lucidity, and saw that he had his back against the wall.

He headed back towards the hub, towards Leshenko, and found him sitting at a booth in Railroad’s bar, drinking shots of whisky mixed with methylated spirits, and for a moment Macquarie remembered.

 

 

 

Before his death, Daniel Marsden had been hunting Leshenko. So had Macquarie, but for different reasons. The parallels are _astonishing,_ Macquarie thought, and drowned out all regrets.

It was Macquarie who got closest, while Daniel Marsden skulked about in the shadows hoping no one knew he was there.

Macquarie bought Leshenko a shot of whisky, and then another one, until the pair of them were thrown out of Railroad’s by the hopped-up bruiser that passed as security in the place, and ended up on the old Observation Deck, drinking the last of the bottle and kicking the junkies who had crawled up the steps to see the stars.

Had Daniel Marsden been with them that whole time, listening as Macquarie outlined his plans to Leshenko?

Leshenko had been cautious at first. “I dunno, Davey, I dunno. The thing with weapons is that the lions are real watchful about them. Any fool could get though a checkpoint with a kilo of Agex, but if they’ve got any reason to even suspect weapons, they’ll turn you inside out on the spot.” He drew on a cigarette. “And then they’ll hand you over to the fuckin’ Journeymen.”

“I’m not asking you to get past any checkpoint,” Macquarie said, and smiled his quick smile. “I’m not a total idiot, mate. Look, there’s already a stockpile in the Quarter. I just want you to put me in touch with someone who might want to own it.”

Leshenko was silent.

Macquarie searched his own pockets for a cigarette, and then settled back to watch the stars.

“I dunno,” Leshenko said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, kid, but how do I know what you’re worth without Roberts?”

“Try me and see,” Macquarie answered, and offered him up the last of the whisky.

 

 

 

And here was Macquarie again, wheeling and dealing as though he was still in the game. As though he still had leverage.

Leshenko played it like the man who wants to help, but is constrained. “I dunno, Macquarie, I wish there was something I could do, but…” He shrugged.

Macquarie rubbed his temples. It was getting so he couldn’t think straight. “What do you want? You know, anything, whatever,” he said.

Leshenko looked him up and down. “What have you got?”

“Try me and see,” Macquarie answered.

 

 

_And he thought:_

Feels so good. Got no words for that. Feels so good.

 

 

“Music, can you put some music on?”

And Leshenko answers, “Fuck off. This isn’t a fucking date.”

 “Come on, just put some music on.” He wants to soar the whole way there.

 “Shut up. No one wants to hear you talking.”

 

 

_And he thought:_

Doesn’t matter. Hear all the music you want soon. Can you feel it? Almost here. Can you feel it? Here it comes.

 

 

 

The first rush hits. Visual. Visceral. His flesh burns, and tears seep from under his flickering eyelids. He sees himself spread open in his mind’s eye like some grotesque page in _Gray’s Anatomy_ , arrayed for observation with his skin peeled back, his body reduced to a circuitous mass of muscle, ligature, arteries, and a wet pumping heartbeat.

A miracle of science, of creation. A work of art.

He holds onto his heartbeat until the rush recedes, plateaus, and he can breathe again. The air tastes sweet and cold.

He can feel the stuff swimming in his bloodstream. His eyelids flicker and light stabs his vision like shards of glass before it all fades to black. He floats. His heartbeat is slow and loud, the only sound in the womblike world.

He can feel every molecule, alive and electric, buoyant on the greater sea.

He is alone.

He knows everything there is to know.

He can see the face of God.

He wants to hold onto it forever.

 

 

 

Never can though.      

 

 

 

 

He comes down sometime later that night, 3and finds himself half naked in one of the shanties in the old Crewmen Quarter, sprawled on a filthy mattress. Through the narrow walls he can hear people screaming on one side, carousing on the other.  His head aches. He is nauseous, and the only light is coming from a smoking lamp that stinks of kerosene. Covering his mouth, he rises shakily to his feet and hitches up his cargoes. His fingers fumble with the buttons, and while he looks around for his t-shirt he notices for the first time that he is not alone. 

There is a girl lying on the floor. She is thin and ragged and pale, still twitching as she floats. Just another junkie like Macquarie: drug fucked and fucked, all anonymous and past caring.

 _Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter,_ he tells himself.

There is money lying on the floor. He takes it.

He is gone, back into the streets. It is dark, and cold, and Macquarie’s body aches. He’s glad he can’t remember, but he’s no fool. It will come back, and he will look at his sins and he will hate himself. He will hate himself even more the minute he steps back into Leshenko’s ownership, because he knows he will go back. Three years clean, though living in filth, but three years clean and the first thing he did was go back to the drug that fucked him over in the first place. It made no sense to have made the promise to himself (all other promises he can break, has broken, without regret), but the compulsion of the drug was always there, and after it left his blood it took up in his mind and grew strong there, and a day never passed that he didn’t think about it.

Once upon a time he looked down on it. Once upon a time he would never have understood it. When Roberts was alive. When _she_ was. Back when Macquarie was right-minded and right in his mind, and back when Daniel Marsden still drew breath and looked down from above at all Macquarie’s works. Back when Macquarie was a different person. Back when he dreamed of stars and patterns and meaning.

 

 

 

Davey had pondered the Music of the Spheres. Once, from the outer hub, he had seen a distant comet hanging in the heavens, and he imagined it was the Creator’s curling treble clef, at the start of a long and mournful adagio.

 “Or maybe an allegro,” said Roberts, and laughed at his abstraction. “That means hurry up, Davey."

“I know what it means,” replied Davey, and scowled at the lonely view.

Roberts was an atheist. He saw the vastness of the universe and broke it down into atoms and subatomic particles. He saw the diversity of life, and denied a parochial God who invested Himself in one race on one planet thousands of years ago.

Davey hadn’t lost his wonder. 4 The more he saw, the more he sensed the music. In the swirling flux of the universe he saw the Hand of the first unmoved Mover who had set the planets in motion, and guided their intricate paths.

Davey thought he could be swept up in the swirling universe, but Roberts was his anchor in an unsettled existence. Sometimes they did it tough, but there was always something to eat if they were hungry, a place to shelter, just enough money, and a plan of action. Roberts was practical and forthright and he looked to those matters always; Davey was a dreamer who trailed along in his wake.

“We do the job, Davey,” Roberts once said. “Ours is not to reason why.”

“Not everyone does this,” said Davey, picking spots of mould from his bread.

“We get paid good money for this,” Roberts said. “Anyway, do you really want a desk job?”

Davey flicked a fat maggot away, and squashed it under his boot. “Daniel Marsden has a desk job.”

“Don’t say that name here,” Roberts said. 

Davey tried to forget, but he couldn’t. Every day he thought of Daniel Marsden, and wondered what he was doing and how clean the air tasted up there.

 

 

 

 

_He thought, in prickling need:_

This wasn’t the plan. This never was the plan. The start of it only, just the start, just the reward for the climb, but it wasn’t meant to become the way of things. A reward, just for the briefest of moments, but this was not meant to be habitual. That first hit, you were owed that and no argument, and just maybe it fucked you up enough to take the second and the third while you weren’t thinking straight, until now you can’t count how many you’ve had since you came into the world again.

Hard work deserves its reward, and that was fairly agreed upon as the price of the climb, for the things you suffered and the places you’ve been. It’s for looking into the void and the void looking back—what’s that from?—but it wasn’t the end of the plan. Should be moving on. Remember that?

 

 

 

 

Macquarie leaned on a wall outside in the street while he got his head together, more or less. The night was cold. The world was colder than he’d remembered, and one thing the drug couldn’t take was the cold. It made it worse. It brought his bones right up to the surface of his skin, and the cold leached in and made them brittle.

Macquarie folded his arms across his chest and hunched forward. 

The narrow street was empty.

Macquarie closed his eyes and imagined the world: a giant twisted hive of streets and stairs and ways beyond his comprehension, and swarming with life.

It made his skin crawl.

After a while he shook it all away.

 “Need a place to crash,” he said to himself, just to hear it out aloud. “Need a place to crash.” He slid his hands into his pockets and headed towards the nearest steps that would take him out of the anonymous squats in their tortuous alleys and back to more decent habitation.

 “Need a place to crash,” he said, and his voice wavered like it was caught on the wind. He stopped, and turned. “Need another hit first.”

He moved fast, to stop his thoughts from catching him. Knowing his mind, hating it, and needing the drug.

 

 

 

_These are the things he thought:_

You’re fucked now. Tasted freedom and filled your belly with it, and have a look at you.

I can be free however I want. This is how I want it. Why walk when I can drift in stars?

Don’t get me started on that. You and your bullshit, Macquarie. You used to be better than this. Remember that, Macquarie? You used to be better. Hell, not much better truth be told, but better anyhow than a fucked-up junkie. Just look at you now. Look what freedom’s brought you.

 

 

 

They had an understanding, Macquarie was sure of it. He knew enough about Daniel Marsden, enough about the type, to know exactly what the self-satisfied son of a bitch would say in any given situation. Macquarie held arguments in his head to test himself, but it was typical of Marsden that he won, and once he had he always did, until Macquarie couldn’t get him out of his head at all.

The shakes didn’t help, or the sweats, or his body’s screaming need until he wanted to crawl out of his own skin and leave his _need-it-need-it-need-it_ mantra behind.

 _It’s not my fault,_ he told Marsden, knocking his knuckles against his temples to get his head together. _I didn’t mean to be like this._

_You live in the world of Not My Fault. You know that’s bullshit. You’re smarter than that. No one forced you to take that first hit. You’re a junkie because you fucked up, and you’ll stay a junkie because you’re a loser._

 

 

 

The rest occurred later, when he’d found a cheap place to spend a while.

“I don’t usually take cash,” said the man, and scrubbed his whiskers with his blunt fingers. “Don’t like anons. Slow week though, so as long as you don’t cause me any trouble I can fix you up.”

“Not looking for trouble,” Macquarie said. His whole body hurt.

The man hacked up a laugh. “It just finds you, right? Don’t tell me, kid, I don’t wanna know.” He took Macquarie’s money. “I need a name for my records, just the same.”

Macquarie looked at the flickering scanner on the counter.

The man followed his gaze and shook his head. “Damn thing’s breaking all the time. You just give me a name.”

“Macquarie.”

The man slid a key across the counter. “Security check my records every Tuesday. You might wanna be gone by then. No room service, no guests allowed, and the heating’s broken. There’s extra blankets under the bed, and you have to let the water run a while before it gets hot. And, kid, whatever shit you’re on, don’t bring none of it back here.”     

Macquarie nodded, and took the key.   

Later, sitting in the shower watching the dirty grey water run down the drain, Macquarie’s thoughts drifted back to Marsden and their previous argument.  

_Maybe I’ll stay a junkie because I like it._

He said that behind Marsden’s back. Thought he wasn’t listening in, but he was always there. Some days closer than others, but always there, skulking, listening, snooping around in the back of Macquarie’s head.

 _You’re going to die in the gutter,_ said Marsden. _And you fucking deserve it._

 _Don’t care,_ said Macquarie. _Don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care._

 

 

 

_And he thought:_

Shake it off. Shake it off. He can’t touch you. He’s a dead man.

Maybe I’m haunting you.

I don’t believe that crap. Dead is dead, and he’s long gone, nothing but a name carved on a piece of wall that nobody ever sees. Some secret remembrance held quiet if he’s lucky. Doubt he even has that. Doesn’t deserve it anyhow. Nobody remembers him except for me. The world is just the same as if he never existed.

You know that’s not true. I can see the world through your eyes now, Macquarie. You don’t like that, do you?

Don’t care. See what you like. Look at the world you made. Set your feet on my path, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Haunt me all you want. You’re less than the whispering in the walls.

I haven’t forgotten.

Don’t care what you’ve got to say. Don’t want to hear it. Too late now to make amends, and here we both are back in the world. Not pristine like you wanted, is it? These parts down here below are the lowest you ever got, but you can take it from me there’s lower, and darker, and there’s hell. Couldn’t look through my eyes in the Rats’ Nest, could you? Couldn’t bear it. Didn’t belong there, but neither did I, so fuck you. I know you’re nothing but the drug.

Here we are in the world again. Can’t shake it, you and I, on whatever paths we set our feet. All lead right back to now, to here. Should never have tried.

 

 

 

Macquarie lay on the bed, wearing the thin hostel towel, and wheeled with his thoughts. 

 

 

 

In moments of unhappy clarity he understood that it was pathetic that he talked to himself, and worse still that he gave his self-loathing the name of that smug little bureaucrat he’d killed.

 

* * *

 

1 One fine day.

2 Daniel Marsden found him again, somewhere in the middle of it all, like he’d never left. Found him again, which was only to be expected, if only for the poetry in it. Ever since he climbed back into the world and got his first fix, Macquarie had began to believe in poetry again. He thought it gave his trips some sense of direction, more or less. Didn’t suppose that Frenchy, the old drunk in Railroad’s, saw the face of God when he got high. Macquarie was different. Had to believe that.  
So he expected Daniel Marsden to front up one day to say his piece. It was only proper.  
It was also to be expected that he turned up when Macquarie was particularly broke, sick and drug-fucked.  
He came on like a disease, always had, when Macquarie’s defences were low.

3Awake. It washes over Macquarie like the tide, and leaves him struggling for breath, choking. It sweeps him up and dumps him, and stings like salt in his eyes. The quick cold shock of it makes him gasp.  
Hands shaking now, fingers cold, and shards of ice in his ribs that stab his lungs with every breath. Guts twisted up. Another wave follows consciousness: nausea.  
Lying on the mattress, he rolls over onto his side. He pulls his knees up.  
His guts hurt. His throat tightens. He is going to be sick.  
This is addiction. He missed it.  
Needs another hit. He earned it.

4 Not yet. Not at that time. The shape of it was still there in the good days and the glory days, but it had already started to erode away unnoticed like tiny trickles of sand underneath foundation stones. Every day undermined it in some way. When he looked for it again, when he needed it, it would be so worn away that Davey wouldn’t know it.


	2. Chapter 2

 

“Come on, get up.”

Macquarie awoke to a boot nudging his head.

He wasn’t in his hostel room, and he wasn’t at Leshenko’s place, and he wasn’t in Railroad’s. Where was this then? A small grey cubicle. A thin mattress lying on the floor. A bucket in the corner.

Three solid walls and a row of steel bars.

Oh yeah. Been here before.

“What’re you holding me for?” he asked the boot.

“Public intoxication.”

“Right,” said Macquarie.

What was last night? Drinking shots in Railroad’s with faces he couldn’t remember now. _Here’s to the Navigator!_ Made him laugh. Down the hatch. _Here’s to looking outward!_ And another one.

His head thumped worse now than any morning after on Agex. He’d gone two days without that, and the shots of vodka had kept him from wanting it too bad. Not that he didn’t want it, didn’t need it, wouldn’t do whatever necessary to get it, but Leshenko wasn’t around. Macquarie waited and waited, and got roped in at last to a game of cards. He had some luck as well, a rare commodity these days. Enough luck to keep buying drinks. He thought he might have bought something else as well, something to tide him over until he found Leshenko, but wasn’t sure. Couldn’t remember too much else after that.

Macquarie raised his head with difficultly.

The LEO was thin and narrow, a stripling. He stood over Macquarie with his back bowed and his sharp shoulders hunched. He had large blinking eyes and thin dark hair that was swept forward onto his forehead. 

“The boss wants to see you,” he said.

He hauled Macquarie to his feet. 

 

 

 

The last cell was for drunks and junkies. It was far enough away from the boss’s office that they could rant and rave and rage against their lot, scream at their invisible bugs, wail in enforced withdrawal, and he didn’t need to hear it.

Macquarie shuffled down the narrow grey passageway with the officer behind him.

“Up here on your left,” said the officer.

Macquarie found that his feet remembered the way.

“I know.”

 

 

The office was small. A single flickering light illuminated the dusty gloom of the close walls and the shelves that overflowed with old files, bulletins and the detritus of over two decades in the job. Grantly’s desk, jammed up against the unused second door, was the only surface not littered with work. Macquarie thought of a man who continues to bail his leaking boat to stop himself from drowning. On his desk there was only a fresh notebook, and a single grid screen. It flickered too, in opposition to the light, and Macquarie wondered if it gabe Grantly headaches day in and day out.

Grantly looked up as Macquarie entered.

“That’s fine, thankyou, Webber,” he said to the escorting officer. “I can take it from here.”

“Sir,” said Webber, and closed the door.

Macquarie swayed on his feet. He felt sick. His skin prickled. He couldn’t focus his eyes. He thought fleetingly of physiology, and wondered if his blood was boiling.

“Sit down,” said Grantly, motioning at the spare seat.

Macquarie took the seat. His head hurt. He didn’t say anything.

Grantly looked at the grid screen. “It’s been a while. Where have you been, Davey? You’ve dropped off the system. What have you been up to for the past three years?”

 _I know you_ , thought Macquarie. _Or you know me. Which is it?_

_Can’t place you yet, but I will. I’ll know you soon. I’ll know that face: that stern, dark, middle-aged face with lines on it that came from something. Grey hair at your temples from all the tired thoughts leaking out of your skull. Here I am, back in your washed out world, and I’ll place you soon._

And he thought wonderingly: _Three years_. _Has it been three years? Didn’t seem it, and I don’t recall very much the passage of time. Odd. Felt like it never moved it all, like nothing changed, that night just never ended. Can it be three years? I’ll place you soon, I’ll know you, and I’ll remember if you’re the sort of man who would lie._ “Where have you been, Davey?” Grantly asked again. 

“I’ve been good,” said Macquarie wryly.  

“For all that time?” asked Grantly.

 

 

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

Time is meaningless.

Arbitrary.

 

 

 

He didn’t know how long he’d been there. Time had passed. It felt like a great length of time, but he couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was none at all. He had tried to measure it in the beginning, but it was impossible, and it had no meaning. He had counted seconds into minutes and minutes into hours, and hours into days, but he had no way of knowing if he was keeping time, and then the sickness came, and he couldn’t count any more. In the end it didn’t matter.

The first few weeks were the worst. Racked with pain, feverish, unable to breathe in the foul fetid darkness. His head splitting, his eyes burning, every touch, every sound a fresh jolt of agony. He lost all control of his body. His flesh burned and trembled. He had nightmares that didn’t end. In fleeting moments of clarity he wanted to die.

Couldn’t though, like his body didn’t know how.

And then, by and by, the pain faded to discomfort, a dull headache and aching muscles. He was awake, and he was lying inside a canvas lean-to, and a pale twitching creature had nursed him.

Splayfingers later explained: _The black air makes newcomers sick with poison. You are very sick.  You are sicker than other newcomers_. _In the dark they cry out because the Rats hunt them, but I will make you better. God tells me so._

Macquarie was in the Rats’ Nest.

Afterwards he felt healthier and stronger, but the wanting of the drug was always there. Sometimes he went days without thinking of it, but his thoughts always flashed back to it again. Trying to sleep, a hit would take him there. Foraging in the Nest, he could use a mindfuck. Walking the maze, he’d rather be floating.

Didn’t matter how bad it was, because it felt so good and it filled the cavity in him that ached for it. It gave him something to wish for.

 

 

 

 

Grantly made a pyramid with his fingers, and rested his blunt chin on it. “Don’t you remember me, Davey?”

Macquarie scratched his forearm. He was starting to itch all over. “I’ve been here before.”

He knew the dark face, careworn and unreadable. He knew the voice, calm and sonorous. Knew the roundabout way he interviewed his suspects. Lulled them, charmed them, and then tore holes in them.

Couldn’t think why he hadn’t placed him first up. 

He remembered in a rush.

 

 

 

Davey moistened his lips nervously, and stared at his scuffed boots. New last year, but already worn within an inch of their life. He was surprised he noticed, but the erratic thought came wildly to him: _new last year._

He breathing was short and shallow.

On the desk in front of him lay an assault rifle. No ammo in it of course. The local LEOs weren’t that stupid.

It was new. It shone. It _accused._

Roberts stirred at last, displaying his palms. He gave the apologetic smile of a man who is embarrassed for causing such a trivial inconvenience. “I can’t understand this at all, LEO Grantly. That’s not mine.”

“It was found in your room,” said LEO Grantly. “You can’t dispute that.”

Roberts shook his head. “Our room is rented. Maybe it belonged to the last tenant.”

LEO Grantly wasn’t a fool. “And he just forgot to take it with him when he packed?”

“I’m a lot of things,” Roberts said. “You can see it in my record that I’m no saint, I’m not proud of it, but I’m no arms dealer either. This is all fucked up!”

Roberts sounded frustrated. Just the right kind of frustrated.

LEO Grantly regarded Roberts dispassionately for a moment, and then changed tack suddenly.

“That’s a fine way to bring up the boy,” he said in his smooth, sonorous voice.

Davey looked up suddenly. _What? Is he a fucking social worker now?_ He wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it, but he didn’t. _Mustn’t laugh, whatever the game throws up._

Roberts smiled though, and shrugged it off. “The boy’s got no one else. I do the best I can for him.”

“You broke curfew,” said LEO Grantly. “You and the boy broke curfew. That’s a serious offence.”

“Me and the boy are from over in Auxiliary,” said Roberts. “We don’t have a curfew over there. We made a mistake. We just went out for a drink.”

For a long time there was silence.

 _Believe it,_ Davey thought. _Believe it. Please believe it._

His heart was pounding in his chest. He could hear the blood pumping behind his ears. They were balanced right on the knife’s edge, him and Roberts, and couldn’t let the LEO see it.  

LEO Grantly leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “What do you know about Solomon Day?”

 

 

 

Can it be three years? Macquarie tried to focus, failed. He closed his eyes briefly, tried to blink up some tears to clear his vision, but none came. He felt dizzy.

“So you’ve been good for the past three years,” said Grantly. The smallest shadow of a smile passed over his face. It was brief. Macquarie only saw it because he’d been watching for it, expecting it. “You’ve kept your nose clean?”

Macquarie made a noise in his throat that might have passed for assent.     

Grantly sighed. “I checked the records, son. You weren’t in detention, that much is true. Where were you?”

Macquarie shifted in his seat, leaning down to scratch his leg. His eyes twitched. “You know, around.”

“Not here, you weren’t,” said Grantly. “I kept my eye out for you, son. And you never turned up in custody in any other section either. Was it rehab? How long have you been a junkie?”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m trying to help you, son.” 

1

“Fuck off.”

Grantly smiled mildly and tapped his pen on his pristine notebook. “With an attitude like that, you’ll end up in the Rats’ Nest.”

“I’ve been there,” Macquarie said. There were noises in his head. Noises under the surface. He could hear the whispering in the walls, and tilted his head to try and follow it. 

Grantly’s laughter pulled him back. “No one’s ever escaped the Rats’ Nest!”

“No one admits it,” Macquarie said, and smiled his quick smile, his flash in the pan, “but I doubt I’m the first.”

 

 

 

The Rats’ Nest was in the bowels of the world. It was a dense crowded pit of filthy humanity, or rather a series of pits within a hideous labyrinth. It was warm and fetid. Spores grew on the humming labyrinth walls, and were scraped off by bony fingers scratching for sustenance. Mournful cries echoed throughout the pits, and carried along the twisting corridors and ducts that made up the Rats’ Nest.

Macquarie had lived in the Rats’ Nest long enough to know it. It wasn’t right that he knew it, wasn’t fair, but he knew it. He knew his way though the humid dark passages, and knew which paths burned underfoot. He was thin and pale, but in his mind there glimmered a memory of a world beyond this one, and he had grown close and cunning with the taste of it.

Macquarie hated the Rats. Their eyes were large and white and unblinking. Their hands were spindly and inquisitive, creeping, and their feet were flat and splayed. They moved like puppets, jerking and spider-like. The Rats were silent and grotesque, and Macquarie avoided them. They had been like people, once upon a time, but nineteen generations in the fetid metal labyrinth had made them vile.

Splayfingers was different. Splayfingers was his friend. Splayfingers had nursed him in those dark first weeks, while Macquarie’s body fought with its withdrawal. He could have killed him, didn’t, and Macquarie never could understand why.

 _God told me so,_ said Splayfingers.

 _That’s crazy,_ said Macquarie.

It didn’t seem like much of a reason, but in those first few weeks and months Macquarie didn’t question it further. He couldn’t. Splayfingers was his eyes and ears in the Rats’ Nest. Macquarie needed him.

 _Don’t look it in the mouth_ , Macquarie told himself. _Don’t fuck it up._

 

 

 

 

Grantly made a small entry on his notebook. He tapped his pen against his desk while he studied Macquarie.

Macquarie itched and scratched, and needed to find Leshenko to fix him up.

“The Rats’ Nest?” Grantly asked at last and raised his brows. “Even if that much was true, and even if it was possible to get out, how would someone like you survive in the Rats’ Nest?”

“God!” said Macquarie. He turned his head sharply, and laughed.

“Are you alright, son?” asked Grantly.

“Don’t you hear it?” Macquarie said. “Don’t you hear the whispering in the walls?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Grantly.

“I brought the darkness with me on my back,” said Macquarie. “Can you hear it?”

“There’s nothing in the walls,” said Grantly.

Macquarie rubbed his temples with his knuckles, and said:

“No one knows what they are, those things in the dark, but they know your name and they come for you. Through the walls at night you can hear the screams if you listen close enough. Those are the screams of the men getting taken. Doesn’t just take them once, those things, get in their heads and their blood and owns them forever. Takes them slow, receding back and forth like the tide, and those men start screaming every time they drown again. Things get in you and you’re better off dead. You don’t die though, because they like to hear you scream.”

“There’s nothing in the walls, son,” said Grantly calmly.  “How long since you had a fix?”

“I’m more than you think,” said Macquarie.

 

 

 

 

He walked furiously, talked furiously, and Splayfingers struggled to keep up. “It’s a leviathan, it’s the behemoth. This place, this _world_ , our whole lives.”

His words echoed in the close confines of the passage.

Splayfingers was out of breath. “What does he talk about?” he muttered to himself, and coughed, and spat bile. _“Hey!”_  He covered his own ears as his shrill screech was amplified.  _“What do you talk about?”_

Macquarie turned back. His face was pale in the stinking darkness, and  Splayfingers could see that his hands were twitching. “It’s all about the mission. It’s _always_ been all about the mission, but nobody knows what the fuck the mission is. Nobody remembers! Things broke and decayed, and nobody remembers!”

He was gone again, rounding a corner and knocking the wall with his shoulder. 

Splayfingers held his aching sides and doubled over, gasping for breath. “Slow down!” he called.

Macquarie returned for him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Look outward, everybody remembers to look outward. It’s all about the mission; salute your fellow traveller. _Traveller Splayfingers, here’s to looking outwards_.”

Splayfingers narrowed his eyes.

Macquarie crouched down abruptly, and pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead. “Can’t think. It’s a boys’ game. It gets _under my skin,_ and I can’t _think_ down here. Can’t look outward.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, and began to rock back and forth.

Splayfingers heard a strange sound, and he saw Macquarie’s shoulders start to shake as the sound rose up out of him: he was laughing.

“The coincidences were _astonishing_. Parallels. Still, I’ve got no regrets. He fucked up. He deserved to die. Can you imagine that? All for the _mission_ , his or mine, I don’t remember which.”

Splayfingers slowly recovered his breath, and unpeeled his fingers from his clammy flesh. “Who is crazy now? Hmm?”

Macquarie opened his eyes.

Splayfingers extended a long fleshless finger towards Macquarie. “It’s is you!” he shrieked, delighted. “You are the crazy one now, yes! _Crazy_!” 

 

 

 

And Macquarie said:

_I can hear them, hidden things, vile things, whispering to me their secrets. Think they can hurt me, but they can’t. Can’t even touch me. I soar higher than that._

_Here I am again._

_Just bad luck. Roberts said you make your own luck, and what sort of luck did he make for himself? Never was the same after last time here. Remember that, Macquarie? Don’t want to, but it’s always there. Never was prepared for that, not from them. They broke the rules. You should never break the rules._

_There are things outside. Things looking in. I_ hear _them. There are worse things ever than Solomon Day._

_There’s betrayal._

_Little squabbling world, always say here’s to looking outward, but never do. What’s beyond the blast doors? What’s in the dark? Things that whisper. Things with secrets. No one comes back from there. How can they? Taken, and gone forever._

_I wanted to see a bruised sky and I saw nothing._

_I break promises._

Grantly lay Macquarie on the floor, and then rose and pressed his intercom. “Webber, send for the doctor.”

He knelt beside Macquarie, and pressed his hand against Macquarie’s burning forehead. “Lie still, son. It’s okay.”

 “I break promises,” whispered Macquarie.

 

 

_“Wait! Wait!”_ Splayfingers’ thin wail drifted up to him through the blackness. _“Too fast! Too fast! Wait!”_

 

 

Macquarie had been climbing through the darkness for a long time when he felt the first cool breath of fresh air against his face. It tasted clean.

He froze, afraid to move, afraid to lose the moment. Cool, fresh, clean. He could taste the bright places it came from.

He had escaped the Rats’ Nest after three years. It was his first attempt, and he’d been planning it since he’d landed there. As he prised the casing off the maintenance hatch and pushed the rusted grate out with his bleeding fingers, he wondered where he would be now if it hadn’t worked. He’d sunk all his hope into this fool’s plan.

He listened to the darkness for a while.

It had been several hours now since he’d last heard Splayfingers, gasping, hacking and wheezing behind him: _“Wait! Wait! Too fast!”_

“Don’t belong in the light anyway, Splayfingers,” Macquarie murmured to himself. “You don’t belong here.”

And Macquarie found himself back in the world again.

 

 

 

And Macquarie said:

 _I want to say there’s no regrets, and you might think that to see me now, as I am, the way things are with me, but at the back of my mind, behind the voices even that my, I don’t know, my_ conscience _has given me, there they are, and they crowd around like ghosts. Can’t shake them off, just shake them down, down to the deep where they rattle their chains and besmirch me with their long-spilt blood._

_He’s a ghost and I can’t get him out of my head._

_Does that seem fair?_

_My past is catching up with me._

_I’ve seen the empty places, bigger than you can imagine. They were all full once, but now they’re not, and there are no fields for resowing. It cannot be replenished. What’s gone is gone. Everything decays. That’s the world and that’s my life as well, and all my regrets fill up the empty places, the black airless cavities that need to be filled with something._

_So I shake it off. I shake it off._

_I adapt._

 

 

 

Splayfingers howled, and beat the walls of the Rats’ Nest with his long thin hands. In the humid darkness, the others kept their distance from his vitriolic rage, and their footsteps scuttled around him quickly. Splayfingers repeated his grievance in his scratching, hacking voice: _He’s gone! Gone! I_ helped _him! He went like a spider, up and up and up until he was all gone!_ _Too fast! Too fast!_

_Funny,_ said Macquarie. _I can’t get up. Can’t climb up. Can’t think straight. It’s all fucked up. It’s all for nothing, but this is the only path they left to me, see? Have to set my feet on it. Got no other. And_ he’s _no help. He doesn’t like this path, but he won’t stop using my eyes to look through. Only shuts up when I’m wrapped in stars._

_I break promises. He doesn’t like that. That’s why he’s here._

_There’s revenge as well, and he’s waited a long time for it._

_I want to say no regrets, but this is the only path they left to me. I’m on laborious ways._

“Don’t talk, son,” said Grantly. “The doctor’s on her way.”

 

 

 

LEO Grantly looked at Roberts squarely. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of trafficking weapons.”

“Come on!” Roberts said. He slammed his hands on the desk and made as if to stand. The officers by the door stepped forward, and Roberts slumped back down again and showed them his palms. “Come on, for one fucking weapon that hasn’t even got any fucking fingerprints on it? This has to be a joke!”

“I don’t joke about terrorism,” said LEO Grantly.

“Oh, we’re terrorists now, are we?” Roberts demanded. “Hear that, Davey? We’re on a hiding to nothing here! You and me are terrorists just because we’re out past bedtime in this fucking Quarter!”

Davey smirked.

“I give up, mate,” Roberts said. “I admit it, I’m Solomon Day. Must be, it all fits!”

LEO Grantly was implacable. “You will both be held here until transportation to a detention centre can be arranged.”

Roberts’ voice was strained. “I’ve already told you, mate, I don’t know anything about that rifle. I’m small time, you _know_ that!”

LEO Grantly didn’t bother reply.

Later, sitting on the floor of his cell, Davey whispered across the passage to Roberts: “How long will they hold us?”

“They’ve got nothing,” Roberts whispered back. “He knows it. We’ll be out by the morning.”

“And then?” Davey whispered.

“Then back to work,” whispered Roberts. “We’ll try Leshenko maybe. Shit, someone in this hole wants to buy weapons. In the meantime, Davey, get some sleep.”

“Big day ahead?” Davey asked wryly.

“Every day’s a big day for the giant killers,” said Roberts.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie thrashed on the floor. He said:

 _Giant killers. Fucking giant killers! No one could touch them, but there we were, and we were giant killers! And I thought in a week I would be warm, and human, and I_ was _, and then we came here and I was cold and dead all over again. It ends here. Everything ends here. It always did._

_Allegra, can you hear the music?_

“Addiction’s a filthy disease,” said Doctor Bahis, drawing out her syringe. “Hold him still, won’t you?”

Grantly and  Webber knelt over Macquarie.

“I knew him some time ago,” said Grantly, watching the needle pierce the bruised vein inside Macquarie’s elbow. “It’s a shame.”

Grantly looked down at the young man who lay prone on the cold floor. In his thin face he saw the ghost of a golden boy, but deprivation had stripped the colour from his skin, and stretched it tight across the bones of his skull.

“What have you given him, Doctor?” LEO Webber asked as the thrashing stopped.  Webber and Grantly slowly released their grips.

“Naloxone,” replied Dr Bahis. “He obviously took something last night that didn’t agree with him. God only knows what.” She sighed. “He’ll be okay, I think.” 

“He says he was in the Rats’ Nest,” said Grantly.

Doctor Bahis had another look at him. “He’s certainly been somewhere without UV light,” she said, and then frowned. “Is that even possible? I’ve never heard of anyone getting out of the Rats’ Nest.”     

Grantly shrugged.

Weber wiped his thin hands on his uniform, and then wiped them again. “What do you suppose he did to get thrown down there? They didn’t even throw Day’s men down there.”

“I don’t know,” replied Grantly. “Nothing that made his record.”  

 

 

 

 

When Macquarie woke up again it was dark. He was lying on a mattress inside a cell. Someone had placed a government-grey blanket over him. It itched.

There was a light on in the passageway outside the cell, and someone seated in a chair just on the other side of the bars. Macquarie could only make out a silhouette.

“Grantly?”

“How are you feeling?” Grantly asked, leaning closer.

“Better,” said Macquarie, sitting up slowly. “How come you’re still holding me?”

Grantly rose from his chair and slid the cell door back. “I’m not. You’re free to go.”

Macquarie thrust off the blanket and hauled himself to his feet. He stared at the open door suspiciously for a moment, and then shuffled towards it.

Grantly stood in his way. “Try and get a meal inside you tonight, alright?”

“Yeah,” said Macquarie, and thought: _What do you care?_

“Son, have you thought about rehab?”

“Not interested,” replied Macquarie. He thought it again: _What do you care?_

_What am I to you? Do I signify? I hope you’re not hanging your redemption on me, Grantly, because I’ve got a hundred ways to fall._

Grantly moved out of the door. “The station officer will sign you out.”

“Ta,” said Macquarie, with a quick smile. “See you next time.”

 

 

 

Railroad’s is closing up by the time he gets there, so Macquarie turns around and heads down the Blue Stairs towards the squat Leshenko runs. The streets are quiet, cloaked in midnight gloom. Macquarie tries to imagine that if he looks up he will see stars, but he is too far away from the old Observation Deck and too tired to make the trek.

Needs much more pressing at the moment than stargazing.

He gets a warm welcome at the squat. There are a few faces Macquarie doesn’t recognise, fat full faces that aren’t here for the drug, that have never touched the drug and let it strip their flesh away, but have needs all the same, needs facilitated by Leshenko, just like everyone. Macquarie doesn’t recognise them, but their eyes fall on him and stay there and he thinks they recognise him.

Macquarie thought: _I drown out all regrets._

“Macquarie!” Leshenko says, a smile sitting on his heavy features. “Where’ve you been, boy? You’re overdue.”

Macquarie closes the door. He takes a mouthful of liquor from the jar that someone hands him and leans his head back against the wall. “I got binned for drunk.”

“No trouble?” Leshenko’s black eyes flicker. 

“Your name never even came up.”

“Nice. Let me get my gear,” says Leshenko, and disappears for a moment into the other room.

The liquor burns Macquarie’s throat. It tastes like cleaning fluid.

Macquarie won’t make eye contact with the others. He’s surprised to find he’s still got shame. Maybe it was the run in with the LEO, the three years in the Rats’ Nest ripped away, and the reminder that once upon a time he was better than this.

 _Shake it off,_ he thinks. _Needs must._

Leshenko returns. “Ready?”

“Good to go.” Macquarie holds out his arm to Leshenko, who inspects his elbow briefly.

“Already had a fix today, Macquarie?”

“Nope. Naloxone, I think.”

Leshenko laughs. “Then you’re in for a real big ride tonight.”

 _Hope so,_ thinks Macquarie. _Hope so._

The needle breaks his skin.

He doesn’t much like the look of those faces that are closing in now. Hope the Agex lifts him and soars with him before too much longer. Hands are on him now.

And then he’s flying.

 

* * *

 

 

1 “Open your eyes, son. Come on, open your eyes. I’m trying to help you.”

Davey couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. He hunched over.

“What happened here, son? What happened? Where are you hurt?”

Davey couldn’t breathe. He could smell blood.

Grantly knelt over him and tried to draw him out straight. Didn’t take a Law Enforcement Officer to see what had happened. “It’s okay. Do you hear me? Oh, son, it’s okay. ”

It took all his breath to answer: “I don’t need your fucking sympathy.”


	3. Chapter 3

Three days after his arrest, on Tuesday morning before security came to audit the place, Macquarie left the hostel. The last thing he needed was LEO Grantly looking over his shoulder with all the rest of his ghosts.

Macquarie found a squat near Leshenko’s place. It was a single room in a narrow passage just off the Blue Stairs. The door had been broken off its rusted hinges. The bedding was infested with lice. There was no furniture. A girl lived there, with all the same needs as Macquarie. In return for scaring off the worst of the predators that lurked around the Blue Stairs, she let him stay.1

The girl had a full ration allocation, and she hadn’t sold it yet even though the drug had taken all her appetite. She hid packets of food under the stained mattress on the floor.

Macquarie lived in his flesh. Didn’t think beyond it. He ate, he slept, he smoked, he fucked the girl, and he filled his blood with Agex. He kept his flesh satisfied. He didn’t spare a thought for his soul until the preacher came to the streets of the old Crewman Quarter and found his way to the Blue Stairs.

Macquarie was sitting just down from the doorway of the squat, smoking a cigarette and watching the passing action on the Stairs when the preacher appeared. It was the man’s audacity that first caught Macquarie’s eye. He had walked all the way right into the Quarter alone, right into the lowest part of it, and made it halfway down the Blue Stairs without any protection but the light of evangelism shining on his face. 

Macquarie was intrigued.

The preacher dressed in black, but it was a black that gleamed with cleanliness in the filthiest of Quarters. He wore his corn-coloured hair slicked back from his shiny face. His cheeks were ruddy, like he scoured them every morning with a scrubbing brush. He wasn’t a young man, but he was big and strong, and, just looking at him, the picture of brawny heath and wholeness in the middle of the filth, Macquarie almost wanted to believe whatever shit he was sprouting.

The preacher began to speak, and soon some people stopped to listen.

 

 

 

Macquarie didn’t hear the words. He heard the rise and fall of the preacher’s resonant voice. It had a poetry to it, and Macquarie liked to find poetry. The preacher’s voice fell back on itself like the tide. It was rousing and soothing at the same time. It had a life to it that caught Macquarie and reeled him in, and left him hanging in the air.

 

 

The words he distrusted, disregarded, but the _sound_ he loved.

 

 

Part of him wanted to give himself over to it. Macquarie had given himself over to all sorts of things in the past and his conscience didn’t even wrinkle. He suspected one or two invisible stains on his soul, but he didn’t look for them too closely. Macquarie could justify anything to himself. He could talk his conscience out of the awkward corners it was painted into by conventional morality. He was living an unscrupulous life; he skipped from want to need to take in a heartbeat, a self-fulfilling validation that didn’t bear close scrutiny.

That was always the trick though. If it didn’t bear close scrutiny, Macquarie didn’t scrutinise.

As he looked at the shining preacher, alive with the words he was spewing into the world, Macquarie thought he would like to throw himself deeply, abidingly into blind faith. He saw the warm righteousness of it. He saw that it would be his solace and his strength, that it could make him sure of himself. Macquarie saw that he could be a good man, an upright man, and that he could be as clean and earnest as the ruddy-cheeked flaxen-haired preacher.

He only had to reach out and take it, but he couldn’t. He recoiled. He distrusted faith. It was all smoke and mirrors, and a self-deceit deeper than any Macquarie had ever practised.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Where’s that god now who made the covenant? Nothing left of your god except that book. Where’s his mountains, where’s his valleys, where’s the world he made? Can’t see heaven from all the way out here. Where’s his people anyway? There’s nothing left of your god except that little book, and that’s nine-tenths bullshit anyway.

We killed god a thousand years ago, and replaced him with the Navigator.

He leaned back against the wall and lit a cigarette. He watched the preacher for a moment longer, and then turned his head away. The cigarette left a foul taste in his mouth.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Religions run their course. They have a couple of thousand years in them at the most before they vanish into superstition like old wives’ tales. And then there’s the tricky part. God is _reinvented._ Some firebrand of a prophet comes along and preaches a revolution to the masses, and the whole cycle starts again. Religion is a mongrel breed, and it knows how to adapt. It picks up bits and pieces and tacks them on, and discards others on the wind, and you wouldn’t recognise it now from where it started in the dust, and it still manages to cling onto people and feed off them. Religion is a parasite.

But there will be no metamorphosis today. That preacher doesn’t know how to reinvent god. Even his vitriol is stale. 

 

 

 

For all the things he craved, Macquarie had never needed God. He saw His face on Agex, that was true, but that was tripping and it was a truer God than any the preacher had known, but that true God never did translate to the world. There was a God, too, down in the Rats’ Nest, but the preacher wouldn’t know Him.

“God brings pain,” said Splayfingers.

“There is no god,” said Macquarie. “Pain is just pain.”

“No, no, no,” whispered Splayfingers. “No, God is real. God punishes, and God provides. God made hell!”

The floor underfoot began to burn Macquarie’s feet. He kept moving. “The Consulate made your hell, Splayfingers. They made the Rats’ Nest and they filled it with filth, and the filth bred, and here _you_ are.”

Splayfingers scurried to keep up with him. “God feeds us down here. We wait and we wait, and God sends it slip-slip-sliding down!”

“No,” said Macquarie tersely. “It’s not god. The Rats’ Nest is waste disposal. Why don’t you get that, Splayfingers? If there was any sort of god at all, you’d all have died down here a long time ago.”

 

 

 

 

The next day the preacher didn’t come back to the Stairs again. Macquarie assumed someone had scared him off. And then, coming back from Leshenko’s after his fix, he saw a strange new sign stuck on the wall at the turnoff towards the old Observation Deck. It said: _Outreach Centre._

And underneath: _All welcome!_

The place didn’t look any better or any worse than the squats around it.

They used to all be living quarters for families, but there was no work in the Crewman Quarter and most of the families wanting to make a go of things had long since left. The Crewman Quarter belonged mainly now to the drunks, junkies, and drifters. There were nicer parts, but not at this level. Follow the Blue Stairs up and the squats and bars and drug dens gave way at last to homes and offices and shops and normal lives, but anything below Railroad’s was the ghetto.

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

Nothing changes but perspective. Walls and stairs and divisions that people made for themselves, and keep to, scratching about in such narrow walls. Dark places.

I have a world view.

Passages and conduits and secret backwards ways. Climb right up through the middle if you want. All these walls and stairs, and borders and checkpoints. Avoid them all, needs must, and go straight up through the guts.

Might meet the Journeymen on those secret ways. Spooks and ghosts and insubstantial things that move between the walls. They see the world in three dimensions. 

Perspective.

Veins and arteries run through the world. Journeymen slip through them.

Even from the Blue Stairs there are ways to reach the Atrium. Follow the arteries, follow the blood flow, and slip, slip through, just like the drug.

Follow the secret ways that no one knows.      

 

 

 

Macquarie drifted over to the sign that said _Outreach Centre_. He was coming down, off kilter, aching, and hungry. He saw there was a line up of people outside the door; filthy, wretched, hopeless people.

Something more than the promise of God had drawn them there, Macquarie was sure of it.

Macquarie joined the line.

 

 

 

Macquarie’s guts hurt. There was never enough to eat in the Rats’ Nest, and most of the scraps that came his way were rancid anyway. Splayfingers thought that everything that came down the chutes was a gift from God. As though some great master lived above, and condescended to throw down scraps to his slavering slaves when they pleased him, prayed to him, and begged him hard enough.

Macquarie knew where it came from. He could picture it so clearly in his mind’s eye.

The knowledge of it made him sick.

Some days he could hardly bear eat anything at all. 2

He couldn’t survive in the Rats’ Nest. He had to get out.

Outside he could hear someone blundering around in the reeking darkness. It was distant, but noises echoed in the Rats’ Nest. It wasn’t a Rat either. Maybe a newcomer, fresh down the chute. Macquarie had been lucky to have been found by Splayfingers on his strange mission from his even stranger God. Most newcomers didn’t last more than a few days. The Rats waited until the foul air and the sickness weakened them, and they were lost in the labyrinth, and then they attacked.

A man could kill a Rat nine times out of ten, if he saw it coming at him. The Rats were pale, and weak, but they had the advantage. They owned the darkness. A man could kill a Rat if he saw it coming, but deep in the fetid labyrinth he never would. 

Splayfingers was still sleeping, stretched out in a thin line inside the lean-to they shared.

“Splayfingers? Hey, Splayfingers?”

Splayfingers stirred awake. “What does he want?” he asked himself crossly, and shook himself fully awake. “What do you want?”

“Where does your god take you when you die?” Macquarie asked.

“God takes us to heaven.” Splayfingers clasped his spindly fingers together in a parody of prayer.

“What is heaven like?” Macquarie asked.

Splayfingers smiled, and showed his sharp teeth. “There is no heaven for you. You doesn’t get to go there, oh no. There is lots of food in heaven, but none for him, none for the newcomers! Only for the Rats!” He giggled. “No, no heaven for you!”

“In heaven, I bet there is food and water and light, and the world doesn’t burn underfoot,” Macquarie said. “Food and water, without fighting for it. Is that heaven, Splayfingers?”

“Oh yes,” said Splayfingers rapturously. “In heaven God will give me food until I am fat and pink like a newcomer!”

 _This is what heaven becomes,_ thought Macquarie, _twisted and corrupted after nineteen generations in the dark. I never believed in heaven. I only believed in the Music of the Spheres, and of the First Mover. Never thought to question where it came from, and how it bent and twisted over time. With every different perspective it all gets further away. So nebulous now I can’t see it._

Macquarie smiled at Splayfingers in the darkness. “I can show you the way to heaven, Splayfingers. I’m going to climb back up there.”

Splayfingers gasped. “It is not possible! No, it is not. You will be killed. No, nobody can climb so high, it cannot be done, not the newcomer and not ever never Splayfingers!”

“I can,” said Macquarie. “But I need ropes, and tools, and protective gear.”

“Impossible!” Splayfingers rasped. “Impossible! Blasphemy!”

“It’s not impossible,” said Macquarie. “It will take a while to get all the gear I need from what comes down the chutes, and it’s sure as hell no straight climb, it might take days, but I can do it. I’ve thought about it, Splayfingers. It can work!”

“Impossible!” Splayfingers rasped. “The path twists, it turns, and it _burns!_ Your pink fat hands will burn off! They will fall all roasted to the Rats, and you will fall too without hands for climbing!”  

“It’s not impossible,” said Macquarie. “I’m more than you think.”

“No, no, no! Impossible!”

“You say that because you think this is the whole world,” said Macquarie intensely. “But I know how big the world really is, Splayfingers, and I know how it was made, and I know where we are in it. I can find a way out of here.”

Splayfingers put his pale twitching hands over his small ears. “No, no, no, no, no.”

 

 

 

 

Macquarie was inside at last. The light was bright in here. He blinked. The Outreach Centre was nothing at all but a large room with shaky tables and chairs, and the preacher himself walking around talking to people. Laying his large hands on their narrow shoulders like gave a damn.

No, there was something else after all, and it took his breath away. Soup, in large steaming bowls, and sticks of bread. The smell of it filled the air, filled his nostrils, filled his lungs. His stomach rumbled, and Macquarie’s mouth watered.

 _Like a dog’s_ , he thought.

The preacher was aiming to fill bellies with bread and soup, and then his words.

Shove them down gagging throats until they choked. 

 

 

_He thought:_

What are you doing, Macquarie? You’re really going to listen to this crap?

There’s food back at the squat. Eat the girl’s rations. She doesn’t care. She’s out of it more than you. Going in there, that’s not worth the shit that comes with it.

I’m sick of freeze-dried crap in packets. I’m sick of food without a taste. I want soup. What’s wrong with that? Don’t come on all self-righteous now. Where the hell were you back at Leshenko’s?  Leave me alone.

Leave me alone so I can eat some fucking soup, and listen to some words. That’s all. Just leave me alone. 

That can’t happen, Macquarie. We have to stick together, you and me.

 

 

 

Splayfingers was nervous, wretched. His spindly hands twitched and shook. “I want to go to heaven. I do!”

Macquarie smiled to himself in the darkness. “What did you say, Splayfingers?”

Splayfingers moved on his hands and knees across to Macquarie’s side. “I want to go to heaven! Show me!”

Macquarie sat up, and stared at his pale, flat face. “Then you must help me.”

Splayfingers played his fingers up and down his narrow ribcage nervously. “Oh, yes. Is it really heaven up there?” 

“It is to you,” said Macquarie.

Splayfingers’ pale eyes shone luminescent in the gloom.

 

 

Macquarie took his seat in the Outreach Centre and ate, aware of the hovering presence of the preacher. The soup was good. He could taste chicken and vegetables, and wondered who was bankrolling the operation. It took more than God’s power to feed the multitude, despite with the preacher believed.

“There are a lot of demons in this room,” said the preacher to the man next to Macquarie. “Yes, Lord, a lot of demons.” 

The man sobbed into his soup,3 and the preacher laid a consoling hand on his shoulder.

The soup was good though.

“Everyone’s got his demons,” said the preacher, and this time he was speaking in Macquarie’s ear, filling it with his delusions. His idiom, and his accent, were as clichéd as his Book. “You, boy, you got a whole army of them crawling over your skin like ants.”

Any other time Macquarie might have felt a thousand tiny ant footsteps like pinpricks on his skin, but he was still coming down. He could still feel the gentle rocking of the waves, and the preacher couldn’t take that.

“Demons, son, do you hear me?”

For a second he tried, he really tried, but he couldn’t. Just couldn’t give himself over, who’d given himself over to so much worse before.

Macquarie said, “I like my demons, arsehole. I know my demons. Wear ’em like velvet. Whisper to ’em in the dark, and they whisper back all my consolations.”

The preacher leaned in closer, and Macquarie could smell aniseed on his breath. “You’ve got a black stain on your soul that only the lord can remove, and you have to ask for it!”

The preacher’s fingers dug into his shoulder.

Macquarie wrenched himself away. “Get your hands off me!”

 “Boy, you come into my centre and you keep a civil tongue!” exclaimed the preacher. “Or you can just walk right on back outside to wallow in your sins!”

Macquarie tipped over the rest of his bowl of soup and stood up. “Fuck off! Tastes like shit anyway.”

He walked away, and could hear Marsden’s patronizing singsong in his head: _Told you so. Told you so. Told you so._

Shut up.

 

 

 

The girl was waiting for Macquarie back at the squat, childish and petulant. She stuck out her lower lip. “Where’ve you been, Macquarie?” she whined. “Have you been to Leshenko?”

Macquarie nodded, and began to unbutton his cargoes.

He felt ill, he felt empty, and the preacher had gotten under his skin somehow. Made him feel like he’d turned his back on something, when it was just soup and nothing else and he _knew_ that but it didn’t make him feel any better. He even felt like crying, and he hadn’t felt like that for years. It was stupid.

Macquarie wanted to be alone, but she was there, right in his face.

The girl put her hands on her skinny hips. “Did you bring anything for me?”

Macquarie looked at her. He could see what she was trying here. Trying to be cute, trying to tease, trying too hard to play the sorts of games that lovers do. It made him sick.

He couldn’t see past the oily tendrils of her hair today, or her blotched skin, or the swelling boils on her thin bare arms. She was an ugly parody, and it hurt to look at her.

It hurt.4

“No,” he said. “I didn’t get you anything. If you want some stuff, you can go to Leshenko and fucking earn it yourself. I’m not your boyfriend.”

 _“Macquarie,”_ she whined, swivelling her hips.

“Shut up,” he said.

The girl made soothing, shushing noises and approached him with her arms stretched out. She tilted her head to one side, her eyes half closed. Trying to look alluring, consoling, or something. Macquarie couldn’t tell what. 

Macquarie shook off her touch. “Fuck off.”

“What your fucking problem?” she screamed suddenly, tearing her hands through her greasy hair. _“Fuck you!”_

“Give it a rest, you stupid bitch,” he said, and turned away from her.

She came at him, still screaming, her dark hair flying. Macquarie felt her ragged nails rake the side of his face, tearing his skin.

 _Maenad!_ he thought wildly.

He pushed her away, and she fell in a heap onto the blankets, screaming, swearing and sobbing.

Macquarie wrenched the broken door open. He sensed her coming at him again, and put his shoulder up to block her, to protect his bleeding face.

He felt a sharp pain in his lower back, and reeled, flinging the girl back onto the floor. She landed, laughing now, and he saw that she was holding a knife.

Macquarie touched the wound, and drew his hand away. It was covered in blood.

 _“Fuck!”_ he exclaimed.

The girl was still laughing on the floor. “Serves you right! Serves you right!”

Macquarie steadied himself on the rusted doorframe for a moment, and then propelled himself outside into the passage.

It hurt.

He couldn’t think straight.

 

 

 

_Nothing new about that._

_Not helpful. Really not helpful._

_Okay, make for the Stairs. Isn’t there a medical station near Railroad’s?_

_Handy._

_Not really. It’s five levels up. You probably don’t have that in you._

_Probably not._

 

 

Macquarie reached the Blue Stairs. There was a group of little kids playing on the steps, taking turns in rolling marbles down to one another, then scurrying for top position on the landing. 

“Isn’t that Lyssa’s fella?” one of them asked, pointing at Macquarie as he shuffled onto the Stairs.

“Lyssa who lives beside Chen?” his grimy little friend asked, dropping a marble and chasing it down a few steps. 

“No, that’s Lina. Lyssa lives in that place with that lady with one ear.”

The boy peered at Macquarie carefully.  “Oh. No, that’s not Lyssa’s fella. Lyssa’s fella isn’t a junkie.”

Wide-eyed, the group watched him stagger up a few steps.

“Someone sure got him good.”

“Hey, Traveller!” shouted out a small girl from the middle of the group. “Who cut you up, Traveller?”

 _Fuck,_ thought Macquarie. _Hurts._

Macquarie looked up and down the Stairs as far as he could, but they twisted and turned all the way through the world, and his field of vision was only short. And there was no one else in it, except for the grubby ghetto kids who wanted to watch someone bleed to death.

 

 

_And Macquarie thought:_

Going to die right here, on the Blue Stairs at the bottom of the world. No floating, no music, no face of God, no Navigator, just this. Just me, back in the world. Same as always, but not for much longer.

Tired. Maybe that’s all it is. Just tired.

You thought in the Rats’ Nest that your body didn’t know how to die. Remember that, Macquarie? Think you were wrong on that score.

Your heart is still pumping. Can you feel it, beating wildly in your ribs like a bird against a cage? You’re afraid.

I’m not. Should be, but I’m not. Everything since coming back into the world has been leading to this. No time now for regrets. Drown them all.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

I want to hear music. I want to soar.

Feeling and needing. The piteous ache.

I want to feel _something_.

 

 

 

_And he thought:_

Shake it off. Doesn’t matter.

Your heart is still pumping, but it’s running out of blood.

Undiscovered country. What’s that from? Doesn’t matter.

It won’t hurt soon.

It’s coming. Can you feel it? 

 

 

 

He could hear Marsden laughing.

_Told you that you’d die in the gutter. Serves you right._

* * *

 

1 The girl was short and thin. She had lank dark hair and pale skin that felt like dry paper. Sometimes in the middle of the night she forgot who Macquarie was, and woke up and screamed at him to get out. He held her down and shouted back at her until she remembered, and then she was meek and sorry and full of tears. Anxious for his approval. He hated that she was submissive. He hated that he used that. Macquarie introduced her to Leshenko.

 

2  
Everything from waste disposal that can’t be recycled goes down the chutes to the Rats’ Nest,” said Roberts. “Most sectors have at least one public waste disposal depot, but so do all detention centres, feedlots, bird batteries, and hospitals, and even the Consulate. Rumour has it, the Rats survive on our garbage.”

Davey made a face. “Sounds revolting. Imagine living on animal carcasses and rotten food!”

Roberts laughed. “That’s not the worst of it, Davey. Think about what hospitals alone send down the chute. What comes from the _mortuaries…_ ” 

“That’s foul!” Davey exclaimed, and watched Roberts’ face carefully.  “Come on, that has to be an urban myth, right? Are you serious?”

Roberts laughed.

Davey sighed. “You’re not serious. I knew you weren’t.”

“It’s a rumour,” said Roberts. “Might be true though, I don’t know.”

 

 

 

3  
Macquarie felt disgust rise in his throat, as thick and foul as bile.

4  
He loved her eyes, dark and wide and curious. He loved her careless intimacy, and the way she laced her fingers through his while they slept.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

He loved the way her lips curved into her teasing smile. “You know I do.”

“Will you love me _forever_?”

He loved the sound of her laugh, open and carefree, when she laughed at him, at them, and at herself. Her laugh made him laugh. “You know I will.”

“Forever and ever and _ever_?”

“Forever and ever and ever.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

When Macquarie awoke he could smell antiseptic, lice powder, and carbolic soap. The pungent tastes mingled in his throat. He had been scrubbed clean and he stank of it.

He was lying in a narrow cot. There was an IV stand next to the cot. Macquarie lifted his head and followed the looping path of the tube to the cannula in his wrist. Hanging off the end of the cot was a catheter.

There was a chair by the door. The room was otherwise bare.

Underneath the crisp sheets he was naked. The tube of the catheter snaked over his bare flesh.

Macquarie looked at the door, and then up at the grey ceiling. A florescent bulb and an air vent. Cool clean air hissed gently into the room.

_Secret ways._

His back hurt.

His fingers were cold.

He drifted back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

He awoke again to find that the chair had been moved to his bedside, and that LEO Grantly was sitting in it.

Macquarie squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light. “Where am I?”

“I bet every day begins like that for you, doesn’t it, son?” A rueful smile tempered his tone of his voice.

Macquarie looked at his face. Grantly looked tired. His dark face was drawn.

 _You worry too much,_ thought Macquarie curiously. _Remove yourself. Set yourself apart and watch the world shrink to nothing. It’s so easy to let go, if only you want to._

Macquarie didn’t say anything.

“You’re in the medical station,” said Grantly at last.

“How did I get here?” Macquarie asked.

“One of my crews found you,” replied Grantly. “You were very lucky.”

 

 

 

_And Macquarie thought:_

You make your own luck, Roberts said. Remember that Macquarie? What sort of luck do you suppose you made so that you ended up here with just enough blood to spare? How did you make it? I don’t think you meant to. You were ready to go, I think. You felt ready.

The undiscovered country.

Roberts said you make your own luck. You were never so sure though. Remember that, Macquarie? You wore trinkets in those days, and they meant the world to you. A cross around your neck, a bronze charm in your pocket, and a piece of red string with a blue glass bead like an eye attached tied around your wrist. A Navigator’s compass hidden in your heart. You put them on like you were girding up for battle, every time you went out into the world.1 Girded up, with all your secret protections. The giant killer.

I don’t have those things anymore. I lost them, somewhere between here and now. Somewhere in the passage of time. Somewhere in the guts of the world. I didn’t notice them either, when they were gone. They lost all their meaning sometime before that. I don’t remember when. I _should_ , because once upon a time they mattered so much, but I don’t. Can’t, and it doesn’t really matter.   

There was a transition. I didn’t notice it at the time. Didn’t notice it until now, and now it’s too late to turn around. My feet are set on laborious ways.

 

 

_And he thought:_

I wonder if Grantly has any small gods.

 

 

“Why are you here?” Macquarie asked. His voice rasped. His throat was dry.

“I’m investigating an attempted murder,” said Grantly with a smile. He took his notebook out of his top pocket and flipped it open.

“There’s no point,” murmured Macquarie. “I’m not real.”

“You’re flesh and blood, son,” said Grantly. “You might even be something else besides. You had life in you at one time.”

_Remember that, Macquarie?_

Macquarie fought to keep his eyes open.

“Who stabbed you?” Grantly asked.

Macquarie didn’t answer.

Grantly shifted in his seat. “I’ve had a good look at you in the past few days, Macquarie. I ran your ident. You’ve got no credits in your account. You’ve got no cash on you. Have you been running up debts?”

“No,” said Macquarie.

“Agex isn’t cheap,” Grantly said. “I think that perhaps you owe your dealer some money.”

“I don’t,” said Macquarie. “I’m square.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Grantly. “Who’s your dealer?”     

Macquarie sighed.

 

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Doesn’t matter to you, not really. You just pretend it does. That’s the game you play. Wipe a name off your board, finalise a warrant on the grid, take a dealer off the street. Doesn’t matter. There will always be another one to take his place, and this time he will be faster and younger than you. And one day if you don’t walk back in to your office because you met that faster younger man who hates you, there will be someone else to take over from you as well, just like you never existed.

Your thoughts are tired and grey. They have leached into your flesh. Just let go, and it will be like you never existed.

We are cogs in the machine, Grantly, every one of us. Replaceable.

 

 

 

Macquarie said, “The games we play are bigger than all our lives. If you let go you can float. Write that down.”

Grantly shook his head. “What sort of nonsense is that, Macquarie?”

Macquarie closed his eyes. “We’ve all got obstacles in our paths. You, me, every person who walks in the world. Either they take us down or we clear them. Doesn’t matter though. There’s always more.”

“That’s the painkillers talking, Macquarie,” said Grantly. “Maybe life’s not as bleak as you think.”

Macquarie said, “I have a world view. I see in three dimensions. I change my perspective.”

Silence settled over the room.

“Maybe you were in the Rats’ Nest, Macquarie,” Grantly said after a long while. “Maybe it did something to your head. You talk more bullshit than any other junkie I’ve ever met.”

Macquarie smiled a quick smile. “Yeah.”

“Are you back with me, son?” asked Grantly, reaching out to touch the back of Macquarie’s cold hand.

Macquarie shook it off. “Yeah.”

Grantly shook his head, and smoothed down a page of his notebook. “I want the name of your dealer.”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Macquarie tiredly. “Besides, it wasn’t my dealer who stabbed me.”

Grantly raised his eyebrows. “Who was it?”

“Some psycho bitch I was staying with,” said Macquarie. “Don’t remember her name.”

“And why did she stab you?” asked Grantly.

Macquarie considered that for a while, curling up the fingers of his left hand to see if he could touch the itching cannula. He thought of the lank-haired girl and her twisting hips and her pout.  “She tried—that is, I think that maybe she was angry because she meant nothing to me.”

Grantly didn’t respond.

Macquarie said, “She shouldn’t have taken it so personally.”

Grantly tapped his pen against his notebook. He searched Macquarie’s face. “How far are you going to fall, son?”

“It’s cold in here,” said Macquarie.

 

 

 

Macquarie pulled himself to his feet. He swayed. He could taste blood.

He couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black.

His ears were ringing, and there was a loud thumping at the back of his skull.

He searched the wall behind him for a handhold. The metal was hot. It burned his hands.

_Oh no. Oh fuck._

He could hardly breathe. The air was filthy. It stank of decay.

He strained his eyes in the darkness.

There was something coming towards him. A paler shape had detached itself from the darkness and was looming slowly towards him.

Macquarie blinked. He couldn’t see. What was it? Where had it gone?

_Oh no._

In a blind panic he started to move. Pain shot up his leg. Where was it?

He couldn’t run. He stumbled, staggered, and then pitched forwards onto the floor, choking.

“Hmm,” said Splayfingers, crouching over him. “What’s this, hmm?”

 

 

 

 

“I’ve tried not to fall,” said Macquarie, later, lying in his cot. “I have, really. I even tried religion.”

“Religion?” Grantly asked, and a gentle smile spread across his features.

“It didn’t take.”

“Why’s that?” Grantly asked.

“I told the preacher to fuck off.”

Grantly began to laugh.

Macquarie couldn’t even raise the ghost of a smile. The painkillers were wearing off. His back hurt, and he wanted a fix.

 

 

 

 

Davey’s cell door slid open. He looked up from the mattress.

“Boss wants to see you,” said the grizzled LEO who’d come to fetch him.

Davey stood up. He glanced across the hall to Roberts’ cell. Roberts gave him a mock salute, and Davey grinned.

The LEO gripped him by the collar of his shirt and propelled him roughly down the hallway. Macquarie’s feet could hardly keep up. His boots squeaked on the floor.

“Thankyou, Henderson, that will be all,” said LEO Grantly.

“Sir,” muttered Henderson.

The door shut behind him.

“Take a seat,” said LEO Grantly, bowed over some paperwork.

Davey sat, and stretched his legs out. He looked at his scuffed boots: _new last year_.

His heart thumped, and he played with the bead that dangled off his red wristband.

LEO Grantly looked up at last.

“How old are you, Macquarie?” he asked.

“Seventeen last week,” said Davey.

“Seventeen,” said LEO Grantly pensively. He frowned, and turned the gridscreen around on his desk so that Davey could see it. “And you’ve been in and out of detention since you were— ” He scanned the screen “— _eleven_.”

“Yep,” said Davey proudly.

“Your friend, Roberts,” said LEO Grantly. “Did he get you started on this path?”

“He looks after me.”

LEO Grantly looked at the gridscreen again. “Under his influence you’ve spent a total of twenty-seven months in detention.”

Davey shrugged.

“Well?” asked LEO Grantly.

“You didn’t ask a question yet.”

“The question was implied, son,” said LEO Grantly, searching Davey’s face for impudence. He found none. “How is twenty-seven months in detention looking after your welfare?”

Davey scratched his cheek. “That’s not his fault. He looks after me.”

LEO Grantly sighed, and inclined his head. “Alright. But this is trafficking weapons, son. This is isn’t another few months in detention. This is years. Maybe even life.”

“You’ve got nothing,” said Davey. “That rifle’s not ours.”

LEO Grantly rested his arms on the desk. “You broke curfew.”

“We didn’t know there was one,” said Davey. He folded his arms on his chest.

“These are dangerous times,” said LEO Grantly. “Have you heard of Solomon Day?”

“Sure,” said Davey. “Everyone has. He’s a terrorist.”

LEO Grantly nodded. “Yes. He wants to overthrow the Consulate. He is waging a campaign of terror in every part of the world. Well, you’ve seen the footage I’m sure. But did you know that he is somewhere in the Crewman Quarter?”

“I didn’t know that,” lied Davey.

LEO Grantly nodded slowly. “So when criminals come into my Quarter with assault weapons, I have to ask myself where those weapons are intended to end up.”

“We don’t have any weapons,” said Davey.

“Is that so?” asked LEO Grantly quietly.

 _He knows,_ thought Davey. _He knows._

 

 

 

 

Doctor Bahis brought Macquarie some water and checked his chart and took some blood. Macquarie submitted to it without a fight, watching as the syringe scratched for a vein inside his bruised elbow. It dug in, and Macquarie held his breath in anticipation of a rush that didn’t come. It left him wanting.

Macquarie watched Doctor Bahis while she worked, and speculated on the shape of her body under her coat. He saw the curve of her hips when she moved.

Doctor Bahis wore her long dark hair in a ponytail. It burst down her back in twists and curls. She wasn’t a young woman, but Macquarie liked the soft latticed lines around her green eyes and the extra flesh she carried under her white coat.

He watched her, and thought secret things.

“I want to know who your dealer is, Macquarie,” said Grantly firmly.

Macquarie turned his head to look at him. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“I don’t imagine he deserves any favours from you,” said Grantly.

“Was that an implied question?” Macquarie muttered.

Grantly smiled slightly. “Yes, it was. How do you pay for your Agex?”

“None of your business.”

All this talk of Agex had reminded his body that he was missing it. He was becoming tense, on edge again.

“How long have I been here?”

“Four days,” said Grantly.

 _Four days,_ thought Macquarie. _Four days is a long time. I can_ feel  _it._ _Can’t stay here.  Need it._

“I have to go,” said Macquarie. “When can I go? I have to go.”

“You can’t go anywhere,” said Doctor Bahis.

The gentleness of her voice couldn’t drown it out.

Macquarie shook his head. He tried to sit up. “I have to go.”

He tried to pull out the cannula, but Grantly’s big hand was covering it.

“I have to go!”

Grantly was strong. Macquarie tried to struggle against him for a moment.

“Doctor, another sedative, I think,” he heard Grantly say.

And Doctor Bahis moved to the IV stand, and Macquarie saw the curve of the shape of her, the white coat, her sea-green eyes, all colours, all lines, all shapes bleeding together.  

He tried to push Grantly away. “I don’t have time.”  

 

 

 

 

_And Macquarie remembered:_

“You’re always running out of time, aren’t you?” she asked with a sad smile. “You’re always late. Always cancelling plans. And sometimes you don’t come home at all.”

His chest ached with the truth of it.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie drifted above the hospital cot, eyes half-closed.     

He murmured:

_Given that time is meaningless…_

 

 

 

And then stopped, and then started again:

_I was going to say that it was an arbitrary calculation based on the relationship between a planet and its sun, that are so far away and long ago it means nothing here, but of course it has always been arbitrary, and it never meant anything at all, not even when the little people crawling on the spinning ball of dirt thought it up. 2 _

 

 

    

He said:

 _Well, sometimes I_ am _lucid. Sometimes my head isn’t totally fucked up. Sometimes I’m almost like I was before, you know, before time passed._

 

 

 

He floated. 

 

 

He said:

_Did you see me on the Stairs? I thought I was going to die._

_It’s strange. The moment before death when the mind freezes is not a moment of fear at all. It’s a moment of absolute knowledge, the knowledge of mortality. Every single muscle seizes up in that instant, and your mind is paralysed with suddenly knowing death, with feeling it, with the rapid understanding of it. Life is precious and meaningless all in one second, and the human brain can’t cope with two massive conflicting truths at once. It freezes, the moment lasts forever, and then a second later the adrenalin hits and all hell breaks loose._

_Strange._

 

 

 _I thought I was going to die,_ he said, _and I didn’t think of you. I’m sorry._

 

 

Doctor Bahis looked down at Macquraie “I think he has drug-induced psychosis. It would explain the auditory hallucinations. I’ve seen a few cases before. It’s quite common in long-term users.”

“If he’s only just come out of the Rats’ Nest, he can’t be long-term,” said Grantly.

Doctor Bahis sighed. “Look, I can keep pumping painkillers in him for now, but the long and short of it is that in a few days I’ll have to discharge him. Do I send him back downstairs or do I arrange to have him sectioned?”

“That’s your call,” said Grantly.

 

 

 

“You’re seventeen years old,” LEO Grantly mused while Davey counted the knots in his bootlace. “I hate to think of you wasting any more of your life in detention.”

Davey shrugged. “Haven’t done anything.”

LEO Grantly arranged some papers on his desk. “I can help you, son.”

Davey snorted. “How’s that?”

“Give up Roberts,” said LEO Grantly. “Give him up, tell me where the other weapons are, and I’ll see that you walk out here a free man.”

Davey relaxed. He didn’t know. He had nothing. “I told you before, Officer, we haven’t done anything.”

“This is your last chance,” said LEO Grantly. “My shift ends in one hour, and that’s all the time you’ve got to reconsider. Think about it, son, really think about it.”

Davey rolled his eyes.

LEO Grantly pressed his intercom. “I’m done here, Henderson.”

Davey stood up.

The door opened, and Henderson stood there waiting. Davey didn’t even glance back as he was walked back down to the cells. Davey couldn’t stop the slow smile from spreading across his face as he reached the entrance to his cell.

The smile was a mistake. Maybe the biggest mistake ever.

LEO Henderson saw it, and gripped Davey tightly, twisting his arm up behind his back. Pain shot through his shoulder and ribs.

“Fuck off!” Davey gasped. 

Henderson bent in close, and Davey could feel the scraping of his beard against his ear. “Think you’re clever, you little fucker? You’re nothing but terrorist scum.”

He flung Davey back into his cell and slammed the door shut.

Davey skidded across the floor. When he looked up, Henderson had gone. He crawled back across to the bars.

“You right, Davey?” Roberts asked in a low voice from across the passage. “You okay?”

Davey exhaled heavily, and then smiled. He shook it off.

“Yeah, it’s all good.”

 

 

 

 

Awake.   

He came up from sleep as though it was water, breaking the surface, upright, gasping, spluttering. The cold fingers of the dream slipped from his naked ribs and left him shivering, dry-mouthed, wrapped in the cold.

His heart raced.

He looked around the room. Grantly and Doctor Bahis had left.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Careful. They’re watching you. Don’t let them choose your way for you.

Shake it off.

Keep it together.

You’re _smarter_ than this.

 

 

 

Macquarie could tell from her voice that she had given the speech a hundred times. The inflections in her voice were precise, practised.

“This is some information on a new treatment centre,” Doctor Bahis said, sliding the pamphlet across the desk. “It only has limited beds available, but I can put you on the waiting list today if you decide. Rehabilitation is your best option. I’m asking you to really think about it.”

Macquarie met her sea-green eyes, and thought about drowning in them. “Okay.”

“They have therapists on staff who could help you,” said Doctor Bahis.

“Oh,” said Macquarie, and thought, _Everyone wants to help. 3 _

 

“I don’t need to tell you the path you’re on,” said Doctor Bahis sternly, and Macquarie wished she would, just so he could listen to her voice.

 

He scratched the inside of his wrist, and wondered when he’d lost his red band, and why he hadn’t noticed until now.

 

“I want you to take some time to consider this,” said Doctor Bahis.

 

“I will,” said Macquarie, He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I’ll think about it.”

 

“I mean it,” said Doctor Bahis. “Don’t just put it away and forget about it. This can save your life.” 

 

She was too nice to lie to.

 

Macquarie put the pamphlet back on her desk.

 

 “I have to go,” said Macquarie. “Thanks anyway.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Macquarie left the medical station, and headed towards Railroad’s.

 

If Leshenko wasn’t there, he would take another long tour down the Blue Stairs. That was the way he’d set his feet on since he’d come back into the world, and there was no turning back now.  

 

The Quarter was busy today. It always was on Ration Day. The streets were full of people. Macquarie looked into the shop windows as he passed, and let the crowds jostle him.

 

A man shoved past him, knocking his shoulder. Macquarie fought to keep his balance, and pain shot up his back.

 

“Watch it!” he exclaimed.

 

“You watch it,” the man returned, and kept moving.

 

“Arsehole,” Macquarie muttered with a scowl, and glanced into the crowd after the man.

 

And then Macquarie felt his flesh prickle. He could feel eyes on him.

 

He turned around and saw _him_.

 

In the flesh.

 

Alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Macquarie stared into Daniel Marsden’s face, only inches away from his own. Daniel Marsden didn’t flinch, but there was a flicker of amusement in his green-grey eyes. He knew he haunted Macquarie.

 

“Who  _are_ you?” Macquarie asked.

 

“Who are you?” Daniel Marsden said, and his lips curled into a smile.

 

Macquarie pulled away and a woman and her children jostled in from of him. Macquarie stepped sideways to let them pass, and when he looked again Daniel Marsden was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

 

Impossible. Impossible. He’s a dead man. He can’t be real. Isn’t.

 

You  _saw_ him.  Didn’t imagine it. Not all the drugs in the world can do that. You saw him, standing there, flesh and blood, and the words he spoke were all out loud, not just twisting inside your thoughts like you pretend.

 

He’s alive, and that turns everything on its head.

 

I’ve come back from some places, but not from that one. Never known that one however close I’ve come. The difference of a single heartbeat, the briefest moment in time, but you _can’t_ come back from there.

 

He’s broken all the rules. How did he do that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_And then he thought, in rising panic:_

 

What does he want?

 

* * *

 

 

 

1 Almost ready, Davey?”

 “Almost.” Holding the red string in his teeth to tie it.

 Roberts shook his head. “Do you really thinks all that stuff makes any difference?”

 “Does it matter if I do?”

 “You make your own luck. The only thing that matters to me is that you look the part.”  

 

_2  
He listened for her response._

_3  
"Open your eyes, son,” said LEO Grantly. “ Come on, open your eyes. I’m trying to help you.”_

 And Davey’s mind screamed at him: _Oh god, oh god, oh god!_

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Railroad’s was quiet in the mornings, and gloomy. Half the lights were still switched off, and would stay that way until the evening when trade picked up.

A couple of men played a hand of cards at the table by the jukebox.

The cleaning woman swept cigarette butts off the floor into a cracked dustpan.

Macquarie checked his empty pockets as he followed the worn path of threadbare carpet over towards the bar.

“I’m broke,” he said to the barman. “Can you put it on Leshenko’s tab?”

“Are you sure?” the barman asked.

“It’s all good,” replied Macquarie. “Me and him are square.”1

The barman shrugged his massive shoulders. “Okay, Macquarie. It’s your funeral. What do you want?”

“Just a beer, mate, and a packet of smokes,” said Macquarie.    

Macquarie waited at the bar for his beer, slipped the packet of cigarettes into his pocket, and took a seat in an empty booth.

He drank his beer slowly and watched the world.

Outside Railroad’s the pedestrian traffic was steady. Railroad’s was very close to the Blue Stairs. The Blue Stairs were one of the main arteries that cut through the Quarter and the only public Stairs that led to the levels below Railroad’s. A hundred different snaking streets led off the Stairs over the forty-odd levels of the old Crewman Quarter. Most of the population of the Quarter would walk a section of the Blue Stairs on any given day, and as Macquarie drank his beer he tried to look at every passing face through the grimy glass of Railroad’s front windows.

That Daniel Marsden was alive changed everything.

 _I shouldn’t be surprised_ , Macquarie thought.

Macquarie felt hunted.

He shifted in his seat and frowned. 

Marsden’s voice in his head had become hollow. Macquarie still heard it, but it was increasingly clear, although he had always known it, that the voice was his own. Naming it Marsden was a deception he could no longer practice with any satisfaction. There was no use pretending it was Marsden now that Marsden was alive.

 _How did he_ do  _that?_

Macquarie sat and drank his beer and thought.2

Dead, Daniel Marsden had haunted him, and that was only to be expected.

Alive, Daniel Marsden hunted him, and Macquarie was afraid.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

I can’t help you, Macquarie. No one can. You spew too many words out at once. You make no sense, not even to yourself. You snatch thoughts, images, words from the ether, but your brain has forgotten how to make sense of them. It has forgotten the process. You’re under a bombardment, a barrage, and you’re constantly overwhelmed. You’re drowning because you can’t discriminate between the petty and the profound, the random and the relevant.

Wheat and chaff. You catch it all on the wind, and you can’t pick the difference.

Your mind was ordered once. Remember that, Macquarie? You took thoughts, stripped them back, inspected them and catalogued them in tidy compartments.

I was a different person then.

That’s not an excuse.

Where does your voice come from?

Do you see? You would have been able to tell that once, but now I come at you from all around. I’m the shadow in the night, the face in the crowd, the whispering in the walls, and you don’t know how to shut me off.

 

 

 

He hated the voice in his head for the things it said, but at the same time he was comforted. As long as that voice condemned him, then he was not irrevocably lost.

As long as there remained a part of him that hated how low he had sunk, there would always be just that small part of him that remained better than the company he kept.

_You used to be better than this. Remember that, Macquarie?_

_Yes._

 

Macquarie removed the packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and laid them on the table in front of him while he hunted through his cargoes for a lighter. He found one at last, and tapped it on the table while he watched the people passing beyond Railroad’s smoke-stained front windows. Their faces were smudged, opaque, as though they were moving underneath dark waters.

He looked for Marsden, but wouldn’t have known him underwater.

Macquarie opened the cigarettes, peeling off the plastic and leaving it crumpled on the table. He tore out the foil and inhaled the sweet scent of the tobacco.

 

 

_He thought:_

Where do things come from? They follow a circuitous route all the way down to the bottom of the world, still sealed and new and fresh from Production.

No one down here really knows, or ever really sees.

I knew the answer once. Saw it all once, a long time ago through different eyes.

The world is vast, but not as vast as the one we left.

The places left fallow cannot replenish themselves. This world does not heal when we cease to wound it. Each time a set of blast doors is closed forever, this world gets smaller.

I saw the places that had purpose, and knowledge, and industry. And I saw the places that had none. And then I saw the Rats’ Nest.

 

 

 

 

“I have empty hands,” whispered Splayfingers, and pushed a pair of gloves into Macquarie’s hands. The leather was damp and clammy in the Rats’ Nest. “Tell me what they do.”

“I put them over my hands,” said Macquarie, and tried them on. They were almost unbearably hot in the fetid humidity of the Rats’ Nest. 

Splayfingers sat back and rocked on his heels, astonished. “Hand over hand! That is how you will climb! Hand over hand, _and hand over hand!”_

“They’re gloves. They will protect my hands from the heat,” said Macquarie. “Where did you find them?”

“Yes, where did they come from?” asked Splayfingers. He tilted his pale head to one side and slowly let his eyes close. “Where did they come from? When God slip-slides gifts down upon our heads, where do they come from?”

“It’s not god, Splayfingers,” said Macquarie. “It’s waste.”

Splayfingers snapped his eyes open. “No. You prayed for gloves, and gloves you got.”

“I didn’t pray,” said Macquarie, flexing his hands inside the gloves.

“Not out loud,” whispered Splayfingers. He reached forward and touched the end of his index finger to Macquarie’s chest. “You prayed here.”

Macquarie batted his hand away. “That’s nonsense. You’ve gone wrong down here in the dark, you know, Splayfingers. You don’t think like _people_. You’re incapable of it. You fill yourselves with the little prayers and rituals your ancestors made up to stop from going crazy, and you really think there is some higher being up there listening to you with munificence!”

Splayfingers drew back, and curled his thin arms around his chest. He huffed. “God has given you gloves,” he said at last. “Can’t get gloves from nothing. Can’t get gloves from Music. Can’t get gloves from _thinking_.”

Macquarie rolled his eyes. “We got the gloves because we waited. Sooner or later everything comes down the chutes. You just have to wait.”

 

 

 

Macquarie marked the passage of time with sips of beer spaced out with cigarettes, and lost himself for a while in clouds of smoke. The haze spread through Railroad’s and drifted just below the ceiling like fog.

Macquarie ran his fingers over the surface of the table. His nail snagged on an invisible flaw, and as he smoked he worked away at it. _Flick. Flick. Flick._

Leshenko’s voice broke his reverie.

“Macquarie! There you are.” Leshenko slid into the seat across from him, and showed his stained teeth in a smile. “Where’ve you been this time? Not binned again, I hope.”

Macquarie tried to see him for the first time again.

 

 

 

Roberts leaned over the small table by the door in Railroad’s. He leaned in so close that Davey could feel his breath on his face. “And that bloke who just walked in, over by the bar now, that’s Leshenko.”

Davey glanced quickly at the bar and back.

He saw a man of average height and weight, aged maybe in his late thirties or early forties. He had a broad forehead and a square chin. His skin was pale except for a faint flowering of broken veins along his left cheek. His mouth was wide and he smiled a lot. His nose looked like it had been broken a few times. It was lumpy and lopsided. He had very dark eyes, almost black, and thinning brown hair that hung below the collar of his shirt.

When Davey looked, Leshenko was buying a whisky.

“And one for yourself,” he said the barman.

Roberts kept his voice low. “He has a stake in just about every backstreet deal in the Crewman Quarter.”

“He looks small time,” said Davey. “How well do you know him?”

“I know him well enough,” said Roberts. “I’ve made it my business to know him. Don’t let the smile fool you. He’s dangerous. We’ll only use him if we have to. I’d rather make this deal without him.”

 

 

 

In the booth at Railroad’s Leshenko was jovial. Macquarie had seen it all before, and knew not to take it at face value. _You’re a lot of things_ , he told himself, _but you’re not a total idiot, and neither is Leshenko._

“No, I’ve been at the medical station,” said Macquarie. He rolled a cigarette butt back and forth through a small pool of beer on the table. Back and forth, back and forth, pressing it under his finger as it slowly disintegrated.

“How come?” asked Leshenko. He raised his hand, and the barman brought over a bottle of whisky and a glass.

 “That bitch I was staying with stabbed me,” said Macquarie, looking up. 

“And another glass, thanks,” said Leshenko to the barman. “Stabbed you?” He gave an incredulous laugh, and poured himself a drink

Macquarie wiped his hands on his shirt and lit a fresh cigarette. “I’m glad you find it funny.”

Leshenko raised his glass and whisky slopped over the lip and dribbled over his blunt fingers. Macquarie saw thin white scars on every knuckle. “No, I just never thought I’d see Davey Macquarie get rolled by a five-foot-nothing skinny scrap of a girl. You look alright though, Macquarie. You are, aren’t you?”

Macquarie smiled despite himself. “Yeah.”

The barman brought another glass to the booth and set it down in front of Macquarie.

 “Help yourself,” said Leshenko. He reached out for one of Macquarie’s cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

 “Not really,” said Macquarie. “You paid for them.”

Leshenko laughed again, and his dark eyes danced. “You’ve got guts, Macquarie. I always liked that about you. Always.”

Macquarie smiled a quick smile.

Leshenko lit the cigarette, drew on it and blew a neat smoke ring. He watched it dissipate, and then caught Macquarie’s gaze. “So, what do you want to do about it?”

Macquarie poured himself a shot of whisky. “What do I want to do about what?”

Leshenko lit his cigarette. “The bitch, Macquarie, the girl of yours who sent you to the medical station. What do you want to do about it?”

Macquarie shook the sudden vicious thought away before it took hold. “Nah, it’s not worth it.”

“I see it like this,” said Leshenko, leaning back in his seat. “You’re a good kid. You’re under my protection, and everything that entails.”

“You mean I’m a commodity,” said Macquarie.

Leshenko shrugged. “Sure, a commodity. Same as you were for Roberts.”

Davey had known the score from an early age. It was a common arrangement in the circles they moved in. All the years that Roberts had fed him, clothed him and trained him up were purely an investment. Davey was proud of it. He was smart, and loyal to Roberts, and he kept his secrets. He was even honest, to a relative degree. His lies were consistent.3

“Yeah, well there’s things I do for you that I never did for him,” said Macquarie. The whisky burned a path down his throat into his gut.

Leshenko waved his hand lazily. “Sure, but let’s face it, you’re not what you were, are you? You’re not the same. If you were, well, this would be a different arrangement, but there’s no use dwelling on that. The point is, you’re under my protection, and I use you as I see fit. So long as we’re both happy with the arrangement, we’ve got no problem, have we?”

Macquarie took another shot of whisky. “No, no problem.”

“And that girl of yours, she’s under my protection as well,” said Leshenko. “Same deal for her. But when someone fucks with the deal, then there are consequences.”

“Fucks with the deal?” Macquarie asked.

Leshenko poured another whisky. “You earn more than her, Macquarie, and that puts you on a higher peg. She’s a dime a dozen. There’s fifty of her trawling the street every night near the old Observation Deck. But you’re different. You’re still in alright shape, and you know how to play the game. Yeah?”

Macquarie nodded. “Sure.”

Leshenko jabbed his finger on the table emphatically. “And now you’re telling me it was her that put you out of circulation for almost a week. She doesn’t get to do that. She’s not that special.”

Macquarie thought about the lank-haired girl. “No, she’s not.”

Leshenko raised his brows. “So what do you want to do about it?”

Macquarie downed another shot. “I won’t tell you how to run your business.”

Leshenko smiled. “Good answer.”

 

 

 

Leshenko found Macquarie a new place. It was three levels down from Railroad’s, about five hundred metres along the corridor from the Blue Stairs. It was a nicer squat then the last one. The door locked. It had a front room that was still carpeted, and had a few chairs and a small hotplate, and even a grid connection. The back room was the bedroom, with a mattress on the floor and an empty shelf above it. There was an alcove just off the bedroom with a working shower and toilet.

“I’ll get you a grid screen later on,” said Leshenko. “So you can keep yourself entertained.” 

Macquarie looked around the room, and fiddled with the hotplate for a moment. “Do I have to share with anyone?” 

Leshenko shook his head. “Nope, it’s all yours.”

“What’s the deal?” Macquarie asked.

Leshenko leaned against the wall. “I’ll keep you in Agex, and enough cash for food. All you do is be here when I tell you. You haven’t been too reliable on that score so far, but I’m willing to give you another chance. If I put you up here, I can keep my eye on you.”

Until that moment Macquarie hadn’t known how much further he could fall under Leshenko’s control. It rankled.

 

 

_He thought:_

So this is your life now? You escaped the Rats’ Nest. That wasn’t nothing. Now he’s going to keep you locked up here instead. What sort of trade is that? Roberts taught you better than this.

Roberts is dead.

Everyone’s dead. That doesn’t mean you get to turn your back on them. You mightn’t like my voice in your head much, Macquarie, but what if next time you get Roberts? Do you think he’d like to look through your eyes?

 _Your_ voice? You’re not Marsden. You’re just me. There’s no use pretending otherwise now. I know the truth about him. He’s not dead, so he can’t be haunting me. You’re not a ghost. You’re me.

You, me, it’s all the same. Call it what you want. Call it Marsden, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who I am. You know I’m right. You know that you’re letting Leshenko own you, and you know you’re better than that.

This is better than the Rats’ Nest.

No, it isn’t, Macquarie. This is worse. Grantly said: _You’re flesh and blood, son. You might even be something else besides._

Grantly doesn’t know the ways I walk on.

Your laborious ways aren’t so special. You’re not so special either anymore. You’re just the same as that junkie bitch that stabbed you.

I’m more than you think.

Not anymore.

     

 

 

It rankled, but only briefly.

 

 

 

Macquarie held out his arm to Leshenko and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes and thought wildly: _Don’t do it, don’t do it._

_Too late. Can’t stop the plunger on the syringe. Can’t stop the spread of it in my blood. Can’t stop from floating. Can’t stop a bullet in midair._

 

 

 

 _Just relax_ , Davey told himself, and rolled his shoulders to loosen them.

He could see the whole square from this window. It was filled with people.

“She should only be a few minutes,” said Roberts. His voice grew wistful. “I like Auxiliary. It’s a shame we won’t be sticking around. Ruour has it we’re off to the Crewman Quarter next. You can’t even buy a decent beer in the Crewman Quarter.”

Davey didn’t look up. “What are we doing there?” he asked.

“We’re selling assault weapons to Solomon Day,” said Roberts.

Davey smiled. “That’ll be interesting.”

“Well, it’s better than a desk job,” Roberts said. “Almost time now.”

Davey rolled his shoulders again.

“There are twenty-eight windows that overlook the square,” Robert said. “Our exit point is two floors down, through the internal stairs. We don’t need to go outside.”

“Isn’t there a ration station below us with a street entrance?” Davey asked. “That will be full of people.”

“It’s no problem,” said Roberts. “We’ll be through it before the local LEOs initiate a lockdown.”

Davey scanned the square again. “She’s late,” he said.

Roberts raised his binoculars to his eyes. “No, there we go, Davey. Blue shirt, just rounding the corner now. See her?”

Davey squinted for a moment, and then blinked to clear his vision. He saw a middle-aged woman in a blue shirt carrying a bag of shopping. She looked brisk and busy, and completely oblivious.

“Yeah,” said Davey. “She looks like someone’s nice auntie who gives the kiddies lollies on their birthdays and gets tipsy on punch at family celebrations. Doesn’t look much like a giant at all.”

“Ours is not to reason why,” said Roberts.

“There’s another line there that I’m not sure you’re familiar with,” Davey murmured.       

“You read too much,” said Roberts. “Just take the shot.”

Davey watched a moment longer, and then squeezed the trigger gently. He savoured the moment of resistance underneath his finger, and then felt the rifle’s kickback in his shoulder.

He made himself watch as she fell. Her shopping bag split open as she dropped. It never happened in slow motion, the way he always thought it should, like it meant something. He always waited, gave it a moment, just to see if he caught a sense of the enormity, but he never did. Turned out there wasn’t any, and she was no different. One second she was walking, and the next she was lying in the square with blood spreading out underneath what remained of her head.

 “Good one,” said Roberts, as the square below erupted into panic. “Nice and clean.”

Davey stood quickly, handing the rifle to Roberts who began to disassemble it. Davey held open the satchel, and watched as Roberts packed the binoculars and the components of the rifle away and zipped up the bottom compartment.

Davey picked up the ration packs from the floor, and stacked them in on top. The satchel would pass a cursory inspection if there was trouble.

“Let’s go,” said Roberts, swinging the satchel over his shoulder. “What are we?”

“Giant killers,” said Davey, rubbing his red wristband for luck.

Roberts opened the door, and they walked outside into the passageway like nothing had happened.

 

 

 

A few days later Leshenko delivered the grid screen to Macquarie, an old battered unit with a tiny screen. Macquarie connected it while his head was still straight, and searched for music.

“What’s this shit?” Leshenko asked as he pressed on Macquarie’s vein.

Macquarie closed his eyes, and let the music take him.

“This is Callas,” he said.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

I’ve got my music back. I missed it so much.

 

* * *

 

 

1“I don’t trust Leshenko,” said Roberts as he pulled the hatch closed behind himself. “I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

“Me neither,” said Davey.

 

 

2All those things he said, that was just me. All that hatred, that was just me. I despise myself. That’s not so surprising.

I took some pride when Marsden hated me, knowing the things he stood for, but can’t take any when I hate myself. Can’t look in a mirror anymore knowing it’s just me staring back.

 _Don’t act so surprised, Macquarie. On some level, on_ this  _level, you’ve always known. And it’s festered for years, grown its own shape, got bigger than you, got bite._

 

3 _He thought:_ Lies and memory. Does it matter that I can’t differentiate?


	6. Chapter 6

Macquarie forgot how to sleep. He drifted through his days, never quite with them but never really sleeping. He saw strange shifting shapes through his half-closed eyes and didn’t know if they were real or imagined. When he blinked they were still there, nebulous, like pools of black oil that shrank into one another over and over again.

He heard the whispering in the walls, and it sounded like the singsong voices of the kids who played on the Blue Stairs.1

He could smell the Rats’ Nest. The stench of rot and decay clung to him except when he tried to find its source, and then it was gone.

He sat under the shower for hours, trying to clear his head. He watched the water drain away into unknown places. 

Listening to his music on the grid, he thought that people watched him.

Macquarie watched them back through tendrils of smoke, and played with murderous thoughts in his head. Left alone again, he scrawled graffiti across his walls, words he was afraid of forgetting and phrases he had once heard used. And, behind the gridscreen where no one looked, he wrote in tiny letters: _Daniel Marsden._

He looked at the name every few hours to make sure it was still there.

 

 

_He thought:_

And if it’s not, what will it mean? Dunno, dunno, but it will mean _something._   

 

 

He didn’t know what it would mean, but the thought of it panicked him enough that he had to keep checking. The anticipation as he lifted the gridscreen off the wall twisted his guts every time and rose thick and nauseous in his throat.  

Chills ran up his spine.

In rare moments of clarity he wondered what the fuck Leshenko had cut the Agex with, but the thought never got strong enough to break through the haze, to deaden the need, and it never stayed with him long enough to refuse a fix.

The worst of it was, he couldn’t sleep. He knew it would be better if he could just get in a few hours. But whenever he lay down he drifted unanchored, queasy, and could only stop the nausea by opening his stinging eyes.

He was so tired, and the days drifted on.

He had been tired before, but never as tired as this.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

So tired I can feel myself sinking. Can’t hold my thoughts together. Can’t keep my body from shaking. So tired like this, and I’ve lost all my cohesion. Doesn’t function anymore, seamless thought to action. Can hardly get the impulses down to my flesh and muscles, like swimming against the tide.

Cold too, as the warmth retreats to my core.

Feels like I don’t own my flesh anymore.2

Not so tired thought that I can’t make jokes.

How long has self-contempt been a joke? As long as Daniel Marsden’s been alive?

Maybe longer. 

Maybe.

I should be stronger than this. Used to be. There wasn’t a thing that I couldn’t do, wouldn’t chance. What are we? Giant killers. Remember that, Macquarie? You were young and fast and clever, and you’re not so old now that you don’t remember it except in rosy hues. You remember that it hurt, and it was hard, and sometimes you were cold and hungry and you just wanted a desk job and a dull grey life and to never have to venture onto secret ways. You loved it though, even at its worst.

You played the game. You pulled invisible strings. You walked the line, and you came through.    

You set your feet on secret ways.

But you’re not fast anymore, and you’re not clever.

You thought you were strong. You thought you were invincible. Who knew under all that pride there was just a junkie itching to get out and show his face to the world?

 

 

 

 

Splayfingers held the torch up to Macquarie’s face.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

Macquarie closed his eyes against the light and wiped the razor against his shirt to clean it. “I’m shaving. Keep the light there.”

Splayfingers narrowed his eyes. “What is that?”

Macquarie held up a thin piece of polished metal to use as a mirror. “I’m taking off my beard.”

“Why?” asked Splayfingers.

“I want to look good for when I get to heaven,” said Macquarie, and smiled.

Splayfingers mumbled under his breath.

 “What did you say, Splayfingers?” Macquarie asked. He scraped the razor against his throat.

 “It doesn’t matter to God. God will know you still,” replied Splayfingers. He shone the torch back into Macquarie’s face. “What is underneath?”

“My game face,” said Macquarie.

 

 

 

Macquarie leaned back against the wall and tried to sleep. He closed his eyes slowly and placed his hands flat on the floor, braced against the first wave of nausea. He drew a deep breath and tasted stale cigarette smoke that was vile.

He turned his head, and listened to the wall.

Whispers, just whispers, vague and indistinct.

Macquarie took another deep breath, and in that instant he heard it: _I’ll find you._

His eyes snapped open and he pushed himself away from the wall, ending up on his hands and knees. His heart was racing, and blood pounded behind his ears.

He crawled across to the grid screen, and lifted it carefully down from the wall.

He read the words: _Daniel Marsden._

They were still there. It was still okay.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

What if it’s the words? I wrote those words hidden and secret, made them a talisman, made them an anchor, but what if it’s them? What if I’ve summoned him? First it was just in my head, but I’ve made it solid now. Given my demons substance. What if it’s calling him?

That’s crazy. You wrote his name. It doesn’t have to mean anything.   

Writing was the first magic. Secret signs and ciphers. Word magic, work magic. Abracadabra.

Daniel Marsden is just a person. All the rest, that’s just bullshit. You can’t summon demons because they don’t exist. You’re worse than Splayfingers. Reject god, that’s fine, that’s your decision, but don’t fill your imaginary void with worthless superstition and nonsense.

How do I know there aren’t demons?

 

 

 

 

Macquarie saw the preacher standing over him, all slicked-back hair and shining face. He was holding that book of his in his beefy hand, holding it up so that it caught the light.

“How did you get in?” Macquarie asked, afraid.

 _Oh, there’s demons in you for sure, boy,_ the preacher said, and Macquarie again felt the power of the words. Behind the preacher’s vibrant tones, which rose and fell back onto themselves like an endless tide, he heard a sibilant hiss, like gas escaping.

 Macquarie thought of serpents, and temptations, and insidious whispering.

 _I can see the demons in this room, boy,_ said the preacher, _and they surround you like flies. They stick to you because you stink of sin! Can you smell it, boy?_

There was hatred in his voice, and Macquarie’s breath caught in his throat. He coughed, and then gasped for air. He could still smell the Rats’ Nest on him. Filth and decay and excrement.

“You’re not here,” said Macquarie, staring up at the preacher. His eyes followed the preacher’s upraised arm, to that black-bound book he grasped. “None of it’s real.”

The preacher crouched down beside him, and Macquarie leapt with shock as the preacher touched his shoulder. _If you do not repent your sins then you will burn in hellfire!_

“You’re not here,” Macquarie said again.

The preacher’s touch began to burn, and Macquarie jerked away. He scrambled towards the bedroom on his hands and knees.

Macquarie hid his face in his mattress.

He could picture his demons circling like dark winged beasts, clawed and grotesque, closing in and choking him like black smoke. He waited for the preacher’s burning touch, and it never came.

Macquarie’s rapid heartbeat slowed at last, and he forced himself to regulate his breathing. His body was slick with sweat.

At last he sat up and turned around.

The squat was empty. He was alone.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie forced himself to return to the front room. First he stumbled over to the gridscreen, and carefully lifted it down to see that the words were still there.

_Daniel Marsden._

He sighed in relief, and sat on the floor. He shuffled over to the corner at last, and stuck his hand inside his boot to find his packet of cigarettes. He upended the boot onto the frayed carpet to dislodge his lighter. He lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Every few moments he glanced around to check he was still alone.

 

 

 

 

_He thought:_

It’s your own fault. You always loved this crap, even though you never believed in it. You used to fill your brain with twisted religiosity when you were a kid, the ghostly and the arcane, just to see if you could provoke the darkness into scaring you. It never did then, but now it’s come back to haunt you better than Daniel Marsden ever could.

I don’t know anymore. I _heard_ Daniel Marsden. It was his voice in the wall.   

You don’t even know that. You can’t be sure. Look at you! You don’t know if you heard something, saw something, or if your mind just told you that you did. A while ago you thought the preacher was here, but you know that isn’t true. You can’t tell what’s real. Just the same as everything.

Are we going to worry about the nature of reality now?

I think we should be worried about the nature of _your_ reality. Everyone else’s is probably okay.

 

 

 

Macquarie laughed. “You’re right.”

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Of course I am. I’m not a total idiot, remember?

I remember.

You need to get your head straight, Macquarie. You’re all over the place at the moment. Right now you have to second-guess everything you see and hear because you’re drug fucked. Get yourself straight, and you’ll be better than this. Things will start to make sense again. As long as you’re alive, you can climb up again. Remember that, Macquarie.

I thought that over and over in the Rats’ Nest.

It’s still true.

Where’s there’s life there’s hope? I didn’t know I was so trite.

No, there’s not hope. All the things you wanted, all the things you dreamed of, they’re long gone and there’s not getting any of them back. But you’re still here. After everything that’s happened, you still remain, and that’s something at least. If you’re serious about setting your feet on laborious ways, then the climb’s not over. You have to go back.

There’s nothing to go back for.

How do you know that until you’ve been?

 

 

 

It made sense.

Finding himself in accordance was new. 3

He wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Macquarie crouched on the floor and scratched at the fabric of his cargoes, and tried to think of the words to explain it to himself. He searched his wall for a clue, and settled at last on one.

“Surprise,” he said, testing the word and finding it suitable. “This is a surprise. This is surprising.”

The words vibrated strangely in his throat. “It is unexpected. An unexpected surprise.”

The tautology didn’t satisfy him, and Macquarie leaned back on his haunches while he puzzled it out. “How unexpected,” he attempted. “What a surprise!”

The sound of his own voice rippled over the silence of the squat, and washed back to him. It made his aching head spin.

“Relay,” said Macquarie. “Relay, echo, memory. Remembrance of things past.”

 

 

 

It was becoming harder to forget.

He shook off the last few months and let her presence soothe him. He could let go of things here, where the air was fresh and cool. She wiped his slate clean. Every night he whispered to her all his secrets, and she closed her eyes and listened while she stroked his hair. She was his refuge. He told her things he never otherwise said aloud.

“I’m afraid of making a mistake,” he said.

“You won’t,” she said, and laced her fingers through his.

“But what if I do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“It does.” It was becoming harder and harder to forget. It was harder and harder to shake off. He had breached his own sanctuary. He had brought things inside with him that didn’t belong. “I’m so tired of always being on my guard.”

She squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to be, not with me,” she said. “I’ve always got you.”

He smiled. “I know.” 

 

 

The memories hurt. They lay in his guts, dormant, but twisted when he brought them to the surface again and laid them out beside his wretched life. He hated himself. He hated the life he had picked when he’d found himself in the world again. He hated what he was, not because he had any dignity left in himself, but because he knew that she would have hated it as well.

He wished he could hurry up and die.   

 

 

 

 

Macquarie tried to stand, but vertigo brought him back down to the floor. He fumbled around on the floor, knocking his lighter out of reach. His fingers closed on a syringe.

He thought, _How many left? Last one? Put the poison in. Put it in._

He lined it up with difficulty on his vein.

The first rush hit, but it didn’t carry him up. It threw him down, pressed on him, and he could hardly breathe.

“What is in my blood?” he asked himself as he lay on the floor.

He closed his eyes and could see it pumping throughout his system, sucked into his heart with every beat, and squeezed out again.

Poison.

“What’s in my blood?” he asked again. “I think I’m dead.”

His flesh burned.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Human life is dependent upon three bodily systems: circulatory, respiratory and nervous. Failure of any one leads to collapse of them all and death results.

What did I do?

I don’t understand the things that I do.

I’m going to die here. 4

How long until someone finds me?

Are my veins dark? Is my abdomen green?

On the eighth to the tenth day after death the eyeballs liquefy.

 

 

 

The thought turned his stomach suddenly, and he managed to crawl into the shower before he vomited. Afterwards, he sat there with the water running until his clothes were stuck to his skin, and wondered why he didn’t have the courage to die.

It was cold under the shower, but Macquarie was too tired to move. He closed his eyes again, and found that the drumming of the water on his forehead kept the nausea at bay. It was soothing.

He lifted his face to the water, and thought: _Can’t sleep here or you’ll drown. Can’t turn off the water or you’ll be sick. What are you going to do?_

Compressed awkwardly on the shower floor, with his chin propped up on his arms and his arms resting on his drawn-up knees, Macquarie opened his mouth to catch the water.

After a while he changed position and fell asleep.

 

 

 

 

The old Observation Deck was empty at this hour. They were alone.

“I dunno,” Leshenko said. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, kid, but how do I know what you’re worth without Roberts?”

“Try me and see,” Macquarie answered, and offered him up the last of the whisky.

Leshenko took it. “Here’s to the Navigator,” he said. “Here’s to looking outwards.” He poured the whisky down his throat.

Macquarie lit a cigarette. “So, what do you reckon?”

Leshenko sighed, and shook his head slowly. “I’ve got no need of weapons. Out of interest though, just how many does it take to call it a stockpile?”

Macquarie grinned proudly. “I think anything upwards of one hundred units can safely be called a stockpile.”

Leshenko gave a low whistle. “How did you and Roberts manage to put that together? I’ve known Roberts for years, and he never struck me as the sort who would be running this kind of job. I didn’t know he had the connections.”

“We got lucky,” said Macquarie. “Did you hear about the break on Munitions a couple of months back?”

“I heard that was an inside job,” said Leshenko.

“Yeah, well we knew the bloke on the inside,” said Macquarie. “So can you help me out here, Leshenko? I’ll cut you in.”

“What were you and Roberts?” Leshenko asked. “Fifty-fifty?”

“More like eighty-twenty,” said Macquarie. “But here am I in a bind. Without Roberts, I don’t have the contacts to offload the goods. I’ll go fifty-fifty with you, if you can find me a buyer.”

Leshenko leaned on the railing and looked at the stars for a moment. His face was unreadable. “I might know some people,” he said at last. “That is, if you’re not too concerned about who you’re arming up.”

Macquarie shrugged. “We came to this Quarter because there’ve been some whispers in that direction, sure. I’ve seen the footage. The whole world has. But if you’re asking me whether I’ll lose sleep over arming Solomon Day’s crusade, I won’t.”

Leshenko looked at his face carefully. “Business is business, right?”

Macquarie nodded.

Leshenko looked at the stars again. “And how do I know that the lions aren’t watching you right now? They figured Roberts was an arms dealer, and they sure as hell know you’re his partner.”

“They figured nothing,” said Macquarie. He smiled. “There were no charges, and there won’t be.” 

Leshenko laughed, and then grew serious again. “You’ve got guts, kid, I admire that.” He put his hand on Macquarie’s shoulder. “Roberts would be real proud of you.” 

“Yeah,” said Macquarie.

“Those fuckers.” Leshenko shook his head slowly, and then drew a deep breath. “It’s getting cold out here. Let’s call it a night.” He rummaged in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. “Listen, Davey, meet me tomorrow night at Railroad’s. I think I know someone who will be very interested in your stockpile.”

Macquarie leaned on the railing and looked up. The stars wheeled slowly across his field of vision. He could lose himself in them if he wasn’t careful, watchful, like. He had to stay grounded. Had to keep in the game.

“How well do you know them?” he asked. “No offence, Leshenko, but I’m walking in with my eyes closed here.”

Leshenko shrugged. “I don’t do business with militants, Macquarie. That’s just common sense. But I know a bloke who knows someone, and my bloke can be trusted. I’ve dealt with him for years, and never had an issue.” 

“That’s good enough for me,” Macquarie said. “I’ll see you at Railroad’s.”

 

 

 

 

When Macquarie awoke he was shivering from the cold. He rose shakily to his feet and turned the shower off. He left his clothes in a heap in the bottom of the shower cubicle, and curled up on his mattress with a blanket pulled over him.

He felt sick again. He said, _oh god, oh god, oh god_ over and over like a mantra, and wished he was dead.

 

 

 

Splayfingers was confused. He rested his long spindly hands on top of his head, and tapped his thin fingers against his skull. “Do newcomers not have God?” he asked.

Macquarie was sharpening a piece of steel. It was a slow job. It had already taken days just to wear down the edges towards a point. Macquarie had plenty of time though. Time was the only thing the Rats’ Nest gave up without a fight. 

“Some people believe in god,” Macquarie said. “There are churches, if that’s what you mean, and preachers, and sermons on Sundays. Most people, though, _rational_ people, don’t believe in god.”

Splayfingers made a curious noise in his throat. “Don’t people _need_ God?”

“No,” said Macquarie. “God is just the consolation prize for people who can’t invest their little lives with meaning any other way. A philosopher once said that if there was no god, it would be necessary for people to invent one.”5

Splayfingers narrowed his eyes. “Blasphemer!”

Macquarie smiled, and ran his fingers along the piece of steel. “But people don’t need to believe in god, Splayfingers. God is redundant. Most people just need to believe in a _purpose_ , to stop themselves from going crazy.”

“Not you?” Splayfingers asked sharply.

“Let’s leave existentialism for another day,” said Macquarie.

Splayfingers nodded wisely as though he understood. Then he shifted slightly, and began to tap his fingers on his narrow chest. He puzzled things out for a while as Macquarie worked.

Splayfingers hummed a little to himself in the darkness. After a while he shuffled closer to Macquarie.

“Where did the people put God when they didn’t want Him anymore?” Splayfingers asked.

“Nowhere, Splayfingers,” said Macquarie with a smile. “Because he was never there to begin with. Up in the world, god has been replaced with the Navigator.”

“What is that?” Splayfingers asked.

“Well, the Navigator is the person who knows where we’re going,” said Macquarie. He held up his piece of steel in a mock toast. “Here’s to looking outwards, Traveller Splayfingers!”

“Where are we going?” asked Splayfingers hopefully.

“Well, he doesn’t say,” said Macquarie. “And no one ever sees him. He is indeed a very fine god!”

He smiled, and continued working on his steel.

“How can you replace God with a man?” Splayfingers asked, aghast.

Macquarie considered for a moment, and then laughed. “Quite easily, as it happens. Some people don’t believe in the Navigator either!” 

 

 

 

Macquarie’s flesh burned. There was a stabbing pain in his head. Waves of nausea rose in him.

“It’s the drug,” he said. “Oh god. Circulatory, respiratory and nervous.”

All he could think about was his blood, carrying the drug around and around and around throughout his entire body. Killing him every time, and never fast enough.

 

 

_He thought:_

I recoil, but it’s not from fear of death. Maybe it’s nothing more than the biological imperative to live, but I do recoil. Life only has the value I place on it, and that’s long since been none. Life is nothing but the absence of death, and death is nothing but the absence of life. They’re both only quantified by the negative, only defined by the other, co-dependant.

I exist. In this moment I exist. At some point in time I did not exist. That time will come again.

The world exists because I experience it. I have no proof it was here before I experienced it. I have no proof it will continue to exist after I die. There are no walk-on parts in life. Everyone owns his or her own world completely. My world is my reality. It is unique. It dies with me.

That’s not so grand, Macquarie. It doesn’t make you the king of all you survey. It’s meaningless.

So is everything.

 

 

 

Splayfingers was worried. “With no God, where do you go when you die?”

“Nowhere,” said Macquarie. “You just die. Your consciousness, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, it just dies as well.”

Splayfingers hugged himself and shivered. 

 

 

 

Roberts had always said you make your own luck, but Macquarie had never really wanted to believe it. Roberts thought that a man was responsible for his own destiny, by the choices that he made, but sometimes that wasn’t enough to explain it when things went bad. Sometimes the game just got too big, and it was impossible to call. Too many variables, that all came in to play at once. Too many to account for them all. Too many to follow each one to its conclusion.

And sometimes someone just fucked up for no good reason at all. Daniel Marsden had, and Macquarie thought he’d killed him because of it. He’d spent three years in the Rats’ Nest telling himself that Daniel Marsden was dead, and that was okay. He’d deserved it.

Macquarie had always known, if things went wrong, then someone would take a good hard look at Daniel Marsden and Davey Macquarie, line then up side by side, play them against one another, judge them, and only one of them would walk away.

He hadn’t expected to be asked. He hadn’t expected a say in things either way, so when the question came it had caught him completely off guard.

“Fuck it,” he’d said without thinking. “Kill Marsden.”

 

 

 

“Jesus,” said Leshenko when he made it up the Stairs to the squat in response to complaints Macquarie wasn’t opening the door. He let himself in with his key and looked for Macquarie in the bedroom. “You okay, Macquarie?”

Macquarie didn’t know he was there.

Leshenko crouched over him and searched for a pulse. “I might’ve given you part of a bad batch, Macquarie,” he said. “Still, I’m getting no complaints.”

Macquarie’s face was grey.

Leshenko opened up his bag and found the naloxine. “This will see you right.”

 

 

 

 

When Macquarie awoke it was dark. His head still ached, and he was weak, but he felt better than he had in days. He could smell food.

He rose carefully to his feet and wandered out to the front room. There was a container of stew sitting on the floor. It was still warm, and the smell of it made Macquarie’s stomach growl.

Beside it on the floor was a paper bag. Macquarie opened it carefully. Inside was a capped syringe, filled with Agex. Macquarie held the bag up and the syringe dropped onto the thin carpet.

There was a note written on the bag: _This one’s on me. See you at Railroad’s._

Macquarie picked up the syringe and inspected it.

 

 

He thought:

_Don’t do it. Don’t do it._

_Why the hell not?_ _Haven’t I earned it? What else have I got?_

 

 

 

He waited for the sharp reply. Instead he got:

_Eat first. Then do it._

* * *

 

 

1 _Beyond the blast doors where the Journeymen  go,_

_There is a path that the Journeymen know._

_It winds though the ways that the world has forgot,_

_And that’s where the Journeymen go to rot._

 

2 _Nothing new about that._

 

3The resolution didn’t last though. Nothing ever did with him. Thoughts just slipped by him, just out of reach, floating away. He could see the shapes they left as they peeled off his unconscious mind like curls of old paint and turned to dust on the air.

 

4 _He thought,_ Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. 

   

5"What are you reading?” Roberts asked, flicking the light on and off.

Davey looked up, annoyed. “Voltaire.”

“What’s the point?” Roberts asked.

“It helps me relax,” said Davey.

“No, I mean what’s the point of existence, ta-da!” said Roberts, and burst out laughing. “You and your books, Davey. When do you ever use this stuff? Who the hell wants to hear it?”

 


	7. Chapter 7

The raid on Railroad’s happened quickly, before Macquarie really knew what was going on. He didn’t even have time to drop his drugs, not that he would have, maybe not, it was a shame and such a waste; but he never even got the chance to act, even if his brain had been capable of reaching a decision in the space of a heartbeat, and those days were long gone. Macquarie stood blinking in the sudden bright light, regretting those days, and his left hand twitched just above the pocket of his cargoes where he kept his Agex, and it was already too late to do anything but stand there.

“This is a raid,” announced one of the LEOs. “Nobody move.”

It was suddenly very bright, and suddenly very silent. The jukebox had been unplugged.

Macquarie’s hand twitched.

Leshenko though, whose sense of things wasn’t blunted with Agex, had enough time to walk away from the booth where he’d left his stash tucked into the pocket of an unconscious junkie he owned, all the way across the floor to a barstool. He was there looking the part of a man drinking a solitary beer before the LEOs had even made it through the door. Suddenly no one in Railroad’s knew him.

Macquarie admired that silently, blinking in the light, while a young LEO turned his pockets out. Macquarie looked at him and thought he was a kid. He didn’t look old enough or hard enough to be an LEO.

“Are you carrying any syringes or knives?” the LEO asked him.

“No,” said Macquarie.

 He wore thin latex gloves over his hands.

 _Am I that filthy?_ Macquarie asked himself, and had the sense not to answer.  

“What’s this?” asked the LEO, holding up the tiny vial of Agex, no bigger than a fingernail.

“Dunno,” said Macquarie.

“Where’d you get it?”

Macquarie shrugged, but he let his bloodshot eyes flick nervously over to the unconscious junkie Leshenko had set up.

The LEO followed his quick look, and thought he’d won a victory. He would believe it more if Macquarie refused to confirm it, and he kept his mouth shut.

The LEO nodded at one of the others to go and check the unconscious junkie.

 _Could have been me_ , thought Macquarie as he watched. He didn’t turn around to look at Leshenko, but he could feel Leshenko’s black eyes staring into his back.

Macquarie knew the score. He had to be loyal to Leshenko, he had no choice in the matter, but it was a one-way street. Leshenko could sell him out whenever he wanted, and he would do it without a backward glance the second it became useful to him.

Macquarie looked at the far wall of Railroad’s while his LEO went through all of the pockets on his cargoes and patted him down.

He didn’t have the touch yet. He was too gentle. Give him a few more months working alongside the old hands and he would learn how to leave bruises, but for now his touch was light.

There were framed photographs on the far wall. Macquarie had never noticed them before. It amused him to see that the owner of Railroad’s thought the place had ever had any moments worth commemorating. There were the smiling regulars, proudly framed for posterity in their dismal little corner of the world. Darts competitions, quiz nights, birthdays and anniversaries, and hideous little celebrations, as though all those things meant something. The high points of insignificant lives.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Why don’t I want that? Why can’t I be satisfied?

 

 

 

The LEO’s touch brought him back to Railroad’s.

The light hurt his eyes.

The LEOs were busy about their work now, dividing up the patrons of Railroad’s amongst themselves. One LEO walked around recording proceedings. Two others remained at the door, weapons out, watchful. A sniffer dog had been brought in.

“I don’t want to be this person anymore,” he murmured.

“What did you say?” asked the LEO.

“Nothing, sorry,” said Macquarie.

The LEO regarded him suspiciously for a moment.

He had clear blue eyes, and golden hair cut shorter on the sides but left long enough on top to style. His skin was pale and flawless. He had high cheekbones and lips that looked like they would be soft. He looked so young and clean and whole.

Macquarie caught a glimpse of himself through his eyes and regretted it.

The LEO took a pair of cuffs from the pouch on his belt. “I’m arresting you for possession of drugs.”

“I know the drill,” said Macquarie, and turned around so he could handcuff him.

“I bet you’ve done this a few times before,” the LEO said in his ear as he fastened the cuffs.

“Probably more times than you,” Macquarie answered. “What are you, like twelve years old?”

The LEO twisted his arm and pain shot through his shoulder. He was harder than Macquarie had guessed.

 

 

 

 

The LEO stood Macquarie over in the corner, and he waited there while the raid continued. Others were cuffed and relegated to the corner as well. None went so quietly as Macquarie.

Macquarie looked at Leshenko over by the bar, submitting graciously to the search, and looking bemused at all the attention. He caught Macquarie’s eye once, and let his gaze slide over him as though he was a stranger.

Macquarie admired the way he survived. Not many men did. Most of the old faces had been replaced while Macquarie had lost time in the Rats’ Nest, but Leshenko was a stayer. The LEOs probably knew him as small time, too slippery to pin anything to, and not really worth the bother. Only a few people knew how far Leshenko’s influence went in the Quarter.

 

 

 

Roberts had always known, and so had Davey. They had spent weeks in the Quarter trying to offload the assault weapons, and it was hard. All avenues in the Quarter were closed to outsiders. These were, as LEO Grantly had said, dangerous times. Trust was a rare commodity even among the old hands. No one in the Quarter dealt in it anymore. It had been too many years since Roberts and Macquarie had last travelled this way, and their old contacts had dried up. Most of the faces in the Quarter had changed. The Quarter itself had changed. Roberts couldn’t read it so well anymore. It was like an animal that had turned.

They booked a hostel room four levels down from Railroad’s and worked from there.

“We’ll try Leshenko,” said Roberts, and Davey saw the worry in his face.

“Does it have to be him?” Davey asked, toying with the red band around his wrist. “What about Jannis, or Groves?”

Roberts prised off the casing of the air vent, and laid the wrapped weapon carefully inside.

“They’re small time,” he said. “Tell Jannis or Groves that you want to contact Solomon Day and they’d shit themselves.”

Davey snorted with laughter.

Robert carefully replaced the casing. “No, it has to be Leshenko. He’s our best shot. He knows our work. He’ll speak for us.”

“I don’t trust him,” said Davey. “He’d hand us over to the LEOs in a heartbeat.”

Roberts shook his head. “I don’t trust him either, but we’re running out of options real fast. We’ve wasted enough time as it is. Sometimes you just have to chance it all on one roll of the dice.”

“It’s a game now?” Davey asked.

Roberts smiled. “It always has been.”  

 

 

 

 

Back again in the cell furthest down the hall from Grantly’s office, Macquarie massaged his chafed wrists and looked at what the game had won him.

“Is this my life now?” he asked aloud, but the other junkies locked in the cell with him paid him no attention. He supposed his rambling was no different to theirs. He wondered if they thought the same things. He wondered where they’d fallen from, or if they’d always belonged here in the furthest corner of the world.

A furtive little man in a red shirt hunkered over in the corner of the cell, his hands fumbling down the front of his pants.

 _Fuck me,_ thought Macquarie. _One in every bunch_.

 Macquarie sat on the floor, and leaned his back against the wall.

He looked out across the hallway to the cell opposite, and tried to imagine Roberts sitting there like so many years ago: _You right, Davey? You okay?_

“Not really,” Macquarie answered.

He closed his eyes and sighed.

“I’ve fucked up,” he said. “I’ve fucked up everything, Col. I tell myself I can’t sink any lower, but I always do, because there’s always this voice in the back of my head that reminds me that I used to be better, that I used to be worth something. And everything I’ve touched since the day you died, I’ve fucked it all up.”

_You right, Davey?_

 Macquarie rubbed his aching eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s too much, Col. It’s all got on top of me and I don’t know what to do.”

 

 

 

_He thought:_

I can’t live like this anymore. I am stretched too thin across the frame. I am pulled in all directions. I can see holes appearing. I can’t hold it together.

It has become untenable.

 

 

The LEOs let them stew in the cells for a while. Macquarie watched the others slowly break. They shouted out, they tried to climb the walls and rattle the cage. Macquarie set himself apart from them, and closed his eyes and kept his thoughts together.

It was hard.

He was on edge.

He tried to remember all the words he had written on the wall of his squat. He couldn’t. He repeated the name in his head: _Daniel Marsden. Daniel Marsden. Daniel Marsden._

Daniel Marsden kept him grounded.

It was all about perspective.

Several hours later the golden-haired LEO came and collected him from the cell for his interview.

 

 

 

Macquarie sat in the interview room, watching as the golden-haired LEO fiddled with the recorder on the gridscreen. Macquarie glanced up as the door opened, and LEO Grantly walked in.

“Hello again, son,” said Grantly, and took a seat opposite Macquarie.

Macquarie closed his eyes briefly. He’d had his last fix the night before, and time was stretching out for him again. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a crevasse. If he could just hold the moment it was exhilarating, but he knew it wouldn’t be long until he stumbled and began to spiral downwards.

 _Daniel Marsden. Daniel Marsden. Daniel Marsden._ It worked well as a mantra in his head, but not here. Not when he was expected to participate.

The young LEO sat down at the desk and laid a pen carefully at the top of his open notebook. He looked nervous. Macquarie wondered again how long he’d been in the job.

“This is an interview with David Macquarie,” he articulated for the recorder. “Traveller Macquarie, please view the footage that was taken earlier this evening in Railroad’s. It is Exhibit, _um_ …” He trailed off and checked his notebook. “Exhibit Two-A.” 

Macquarie turned his tired eyes to the gridscreen and watched his arrest from a new perspective. Every now and again he caught a glimpse of Leshenko in the edge of a frame. He looked so above suspicion that Macquarie wanted to laugh, but laughing was always a mistake, and he kept his face impassive.

He found a loose thread in the worn left knee of his cargoes, and fiddled with it. His hands were beginning to twitch. He was losing his balance.

“Traveller Macquarie, do you dispute the footage?” the golden-haired LEO asked earnestly.

“Nope,” said Macquarie.

The LEO cleared his throat. “Traveller Macquarie, is there anything you would like to say for the recording?”

“Nope,” said Macquarie.

“Traveller, you will not be given another opportunity to present any extenuating circumstances.”

“Sure,” said Macquarie. His guts felt sick.

The LEO frowned slightly and pressed on. “Traveller Macquarie, the drug found in your possession is Agex. Is that correct?”

Macquarie showed him his flash in the pan smile. “I hope so. That’s what I paid for.”

Grantly smiled as well, and the young LEO looked flustered. He gathered himself again. “Traveller Macquarie, where did you buy the Agex?”

“In the street,” said Macquarie.

“Not in the bar?” the LEO asked.

“Nope,” said Macquarie. He began to tap his foot.

“Who did you buy it off?”

“Don’t know his name,” said Macquarie.

 “Um, can you describe him?” the LEO asked.

“Nope,” said Macquarie, and folded his arms across his chest. 

The LEO floundered. He opened his mouth, but had run out of questions.

Macquarie glanced at Grantly. “He’s new, right? I asked him back at Railroad’s, but he didn’t say.”

Grantly smiled again. He gave the LEO a reassuring nod. “Quite new, yes.”

Macquarie leaned forward in his seat, and lowered his voice. “How do you feel it’s going?” he whispered.

The LEO looked at him strangely.

Grantly leaned over and flicked the recorder off. “This interview is over.”

Macquarie smiled at the golden-haired LEO, and leaned back. “I’m just playing with you, officer. Look, you’ve got me on the possession, I’m not giving you anything else.”

The LEO looked at his notebook. “If you do, then I can recommend the magistrate is lenient.”

“I doubt that,” said Macquarie. “Not with my record.”

The LEO looked at the gridscreen.

“Macquarie’s no stranger to detention,” said Grantly. “You’ll see that he was first arrested when he was eight years old, and first sent to detention when he was eleven. How old are you now, Macquarie? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

“I’ve lost track,” said Macquarie, and folded his arms again. He concentrated on keeping it together.

“It says twenty here,” said the young LEO.1

“How about that?” said Macquarie with a brilliant smile. “We’re both just a couple of crazy kids. Hey, maybe it will work out for us after all. What do you say? I’m up for it if you are.”

He thought about it. Actually thought about it, and that was the insane part. He imagined what the LEO would look like with his golden hair damp from a shower, and how it would feel to whisper to him in the night. Nothing sexual, not that kind of fantasy. They would share secret smiles. Macquarie would be comforted by his laughter. He would love him.

He could see it. That was crazy.

In his mind’s eye he made his golden hair turn dark.

The LEO looked at him askance.

Macquarie narrowed his eyes and pulled himself back from his wild tangent.

“Macquarie is a recidivist offender, Harper,” said Grantly. “He’s been in and out of detention for the best part of a decade. He will never tell you more in an interview than he has to. He wouldn’t admit to having ten fingers and toes unless he knew you could prove it first.”

Macquarie smiled to himself and flexed his twitching fingers under the cover of the desk. Brown hair, it had to be brown hair. Dark like melted chocolate.

“His attitude remains, however, his own,” said Grantly, and rested his elbows on the table. “I’d tell you to watch your mouth, son, but I don’t think you know how.”

“I blow hot and cold,” said Macquarie, nodding. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment to try and bring his thoughts back into order.

“He’s also currently going through withdrawal,” said Grantly impassively. “Macquarie talks a lot during withdrawal. So do a lot of junkies. That’s a usual piece of information for you to know, Sacha.” He rested his elbows on the desk. “Son, how often do you need a fix nowadays?”

Macquarie rubbed his temples. “Depends. Once a day, at least once a day. More though, sometimes, you know, if I gotta be floating.” He opened his eyes. “You know, if there’s things I don’t want my eyes to see. I want to say no regrets, I do, but there they are all the same. I mean, I want to get straight, but every time it gets to this it’s just too hard.”

“You’re in trouble, son, I think.”

“Yeah,” nodded Macquarie. “Yeah. The other day when I was here you gave me naloxone. That was good. Got me straight.”

“That was three weeks ago, son,” said Grantly.

“Three weeks?” Macquarie asked. He drew a deep breath. “I didn’t realise.”

He closed his eyes and imagined the feel of a hand on his cheek: _Time slips by you. I know it does._

Grantly nodded. “You’re not overdosing now, son, you’re in withdrawal. But I’m sure I can arrange something to tide you over, if you want to give me some answers. What do you say?”

Macquarie turned his faltering gaze to LEO Harper. He meant nothing to him now. He was slipping. “Know what this is? This is inducement. If I could afford a solicitor, we’d talk some more about that with the magistrate.” He smiled. “Can’t though, so there you are. It’s not just inducement though, it’s withholding medical care, and that’s breaking the rules, LEO. I know the rules.”

“Your type always does,” said Grantly.

“So does yours,” said Macquarie. “And sometimes they break them.”

Grantly leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders. He sighed. “Who’s your dealer, son?”

 _Leshenko_ , thought Macquarie, and looked Grantly straight in the eye. He couldn’t say the word though. Couldn’t even open his mouth even though he knew it was Leshenko murdering him by degrees.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

The degrees I love. They take me a little further away with every fix. When the time comes I’ll be far from shore, out of all sight of land, and I’ll just sink quietly into the black water. Maybe it will be peaceful, wrapped in stars, because he’s not really killing me. That’s not his intention at all. Leshenko doesn’t think like that. Leshenko will use me up until I’m done, it’s all business to him and there’s no malice in it, and he can’t guess that it suits my purposes. Maybe I’m still playing the game after all. Maybe I’m not yet done.

Maybe I do remember the plan.

 

 

 

 

“It’s not murder,” Macquarie said to Grantly. “It’s more assisted suicide.”   

“What is?” Grantly asked, his forehead creased with a frown. He exchanged a glance with LEO Harper.

“Agex,” said Macquarie.

Grantly leaned forward in his seat. “Are you suicidal, son? Do you want to hurt yourself?”

“This way doesn’t hurt,” said Macquarie and pulled himself back from the brink. “Just because I want to kill myself doesn’t mean I’m crazy. Suicidal tendencies aren’t always indicative of mental illness. It’s possible to get there using a rational process of thought.”

“You’re not rational,” said Grantly. “You’re an addict.”

“I am now, maybe, sure,” said Macquarie. He picked at the knee of his cargoes. “I can hardly keep it together right now, but these are the thoughts I have when I’m straight as well, these were formulated long before, and you know, what’s crazy anyhow?”

 

 

 

_He thought:_

How do you know what’s real? How do you know anything? It’s all about perspective. You’ve teetered on the edge for years now, playing to all outward appearances while in your brain you teemed with thoughts that made you a stranger, made you look in from the outside, made you a dissociative.

_Here’s to looking outward._

Mental soundness is all about how others perceive you; Grantly, Harper, Doctor Bahis, even Leshenko. It’s about how you put a lid on it. Act ordinary, hold your tongue, and keep your thoughts well hidden from inspection.

 

 

 

“I need to clarify,” said Macquarie. His eyes began to sting, and his skin was itching. He said: “It’s a philosophical issue, absurdity and all that. It’s not just the negation of all other systems of belief, although it seems that way from where you’re sitting. It’s a brave new world in reality, it’s _liberating_ , and I didn’t just say it to get onto suicide watch and get my own cell and stuff, though it would be nice, you know, because sooner or later caged animals turn on one another, that’s just a natural law, and I’m fairly certain the bloke in the red shirt is a chronic masturbator, he’s had his hand down his pants the whole time since the raid, and nobody wants to see that.” He laughed suddenly, and scratched his wrist.

“I knew you’d have to draw breath sooner or later,” said Grantly. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Macquarie shook it off. “Yeah, I am.”

“You’re going back to your cell now,” said Grantly. “Try and sleep it off.”

“Can’t sleep this off,” said Macquarie. “Not what I’ve got. Can I have a sedative?”

“No,” said Grantly smoothly. There was compassion in his voice but it was still a refusal.

Macquarie stared at him aghast.

“LEO Harper,” continued Grantly, “please escort your prisoner back to his cell.”

“Yes, sir,” said Harper.

Macquarie rose to his feet. He scratched his head and gave an incredulous laugh. “That’s breaking the rules. Fuck, I don’t even know why I’m surprised!”

Grantly leaned back in his seat and looked Macquarie up and down impassively. “Neither do I, son. Sleep well.”

 

 

 

Macquarie didn’t sleep, couldn’t. His guts hurt, and he hunched over in the corner of his cell. He had his own cell now, that was something, but it wasn’t much, and it couldn’t distract him from what he needed. He leaned there and wished he’d died that time in the shower, or that time on the Stairs, or even in the Rats’ Nest, anything but this.

He leaned against the wall and waited and waited and waited.

 

 

 

“It’s impossible to mark the time down here,” said Macquarie. His eyes strained in the darkness as he tried to find the seam in the wall. “I think that’s what I hate the most.”

Splayfingers had no idea what he was talking about. “Hmm, yes.”

Macquarie smiled despite himself at his naivety. “How much time has passed? Am I old, Splayfingers? How long has it been since I came down the chute?”

Splayfingers narrowed his eyes and shrugged his frail shoulders.

“Not that it matters,” said Macquarie. He levered the metal spike he’d made into the seam in the wall. “Nothing does, right?” 

Splayfingers didn’t bother answer.

“Now behind here,” said Macquarie, bracing, “should be a handhold.”

The metal creaked and groaned as Macquarie levered it outwards.

Splayfingers gasped. “What is in there?”

“If I’m right,” said Macquarie, “and I think I am, it’s the world’s skeleton, the bones of the monster. Lay it bare, and we’ll own it.” 

 

 

 

 

Grantly brought him breakfast a few hours later.

Macquarie ate sitting on the floor with his legs crossed in front of him. He felt weak and tired and his whole body ached. He could barely lift the fork.

Grantly leaned on the wall and watched him.

Macquarie was too tired to care.

Grantly stirred at last. “Had I given you a sedative, son, you’d be standing in front of the magistrate right now. Did you hear the others go?”

Macquarie turned his eyes upwards. “I heard whispers.”

“There’s nothing in the walls, son,” said Grantly patiently.

“There’s everything,” murmured Macquarie. “I don’t want to go to detention.”

Grantly crouched down beside him and searched his tired face. “It can’t be worse than how you’re living now.”

“Could be, I don’t know.”

Grantly frowned. “Davey, you needn’t go back to detention. I can caution you.”

“For what?” Macquarie asked. He set his bowl of noodles aside with a shaking hand. “I can’t give you my dealer’s name.”

“I know that,” said Grantly quietly. “Davey, why were you selling weapons to Solomon Day?”

“Wasn’t,” said Macquarie.2

“That’s not true, is it, son?”

Macquarie closed his stinging eyes. “Let it go, Grantly. It was years ago. You had no evidence then, and you’ve got none now. Why do you even care anymore? It won’t wipe the slate clean.”

Grantly didn’t answer.

“It won’t absolve you,” said Macquarie.

 

 

 

  

Davey woke up as his cell door was slid open. The lights were still off, and he couldn’t see anything apart from looming shapes entering the cell.

He opened his mouth to complain, and there was a hand over it. He tried to bite, tried to struggle, but they held him down.

_Davey! Davey!_

He could hear Roberts calling, but couldn’t answer. He wanted to say _, I’m okay, I’m okay_ , but then he realised it wasn’t Roberts calling to see if he was alright, it was Roberts calling for help.

Davey had never heard that before. It chilled him.

The lights were turned on, his eyes burned, and Davey twisted to see what was happening to Roberts, but could only see a forest of legs. He struggled and was pulled back again. There were three of them at least, maybe four, and Davey couldn’t get away.

A boot was swung into his guts, and Davey grunted into the hand of the LEO kneeling on his chest. He couldn’t breathe anymore. Tears streamed out of his eyes, and he couldn’t breathe.

The beating continued.

It felt like it lasted forever. He heard his own ribs crack and pain tore through him.

He had crazy thoughts. _They can’t_ do  _this! It’s against the rules!_

He could smell blood.

And when he thought he was already dead, they left him.

The cell was silent apart from the sound of his own choking sobs.

He lay for a long time on his side. Every breath hurt. He could taste blood. He was too afraid to try and move his legs for a long time.

His own breath wheezed and rattled in his throat.

“I’m okay,” he gasped at last, and dragged himself towards the bars of the cell. “I’m okay. Col?”

Davey looked across the narrow passageway into the opposite cell.

Roberts were kneeling there in profile, slumped forward. His chin was resting on his chest. His arms were hanging slackly.

Davey saw the torn bed sheet knotted in the bars of the cell, and followed the line of it back to Roberts. They had hanged him with it.

Davey looked at what the game had won him, and his world fell apart.

 

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

I’m done with this. I don’t want to live here anymore. I always come back, right to this day, right to this place. I never really left maybe. Part of me is always here, always looking, and always seeing that. It’s not right that it happened, but I can’t live in this place anymore.

Do you know what’s pathetic, Macquarie? Living in a moment when three years have already washed over it. It doesn’t matter what it was. It’s done. It’s all done.

Let it go.

 

 

 

“Do you know what it felt like?” Macquarie asked later as he stood at the front desk of the security station.

“I lost a lot of things after that day,” answered Grantly quietly.

“Not as much as I did,” said Macquarie. He shakily signed his name in the book. “I take it I’m free to go?”

He looked outside at the street.

“You’re to sign in here every Monday and Thursday,” said Grantly, and then his face softened. “Where are you going, son?’

Macquarie shrugged. He thought for a moment. “I’m tired. Feels like this is how my life unwinds, and always will. Imagine that. A long grey thread stretched out down all the years. Still got the shreds of a plan though, and that’s something, right?”

“What are you talking about, son?” Grantly asked.

“I’m strung out,” said Macquarie. He gave a wry smile. “A long grey thread stretched out, and thin, and catching dust and fraying.”

“Where are you going, Davey?”

Macquarie looked at the floor. “I’m setting my feet on laborious ways again. But I’ll tell you something, Grantly, before I go.”

“What’s that?” asked Grantly curiously.

“I’m more than you think,” said Macquarie. He turned to walk away, and said over his shoulder: “Also, I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Macquarie slipped his hands into his pockets and stepped out into the street.

* * *

 

 

1 _Macquarie thought:_ I wonder if that’s true.

 

 

2    Leshenko’s contact was a woman. Davey hadn’t expected that.

     Davey felt his perspective shift. He readjusted.

     _Game on,_ he thought.


	8. Chapter 8

After his release from Security, Macquarie set about gently killing himself. It was better than waiting for Daniel Marsden to get around to it. That had always been Marsden’s problem; he lurked in the shadows, he watched from the outside, he never acted quickly enough. He didn’t know how.

Macquarie thought: _I’ll finish the job for him, same as always._ And he set about carefully rationing his tiny vials of Agex, siphoning off just a little each time, stockpiling for a fatal overdose. It wasn’t easy to do. Leshenko still gave him his fix in person most times, but every so often he just passed Macquarie a vial in Railroad’s and sent him on his way. Those were the worst times. Macquarie wanted it all at once, but with shaking hands he took only what he needed to keep from slipping, and the rest he squirreled away in a cavity in the back of the gridscreen where he hid all his sins.

 

 

_He thought:_

_Daniel Marsden_. Can’t make it frighten me today. It’s just words, just a sequence of letters. Just symbols. Put those symbols together in the right order, and it _signifies_. A million different combinations of those symbols, a million times a million, but that particular small sequence stands for a living, breathing human being. It stands for his resurrection, my ruination, and it’s all the same thing in the end.

 It’s just a name, but it signifies.   

 

  

Macquarie felt his days stretch out while he plotted their end.

Lying on the mattress in the bedroom, smoking cigarettes and watching the smoke curl up to the ceiling, Macquarie thought: _It could be worse. It has been worse._

_Remember that, Macquarie?_

There was a knock on the door.

Macquarie was wary. Leshenko never knocked. Leshenko had the key, and it was shared out among all Macquarie’s visitors.

Macquarie regarded the closed door cautiously. “Who is it?”

“Grantly,” came the reply.

“Fuck me,” muttered Macquarie, and opened the door.

Grantly was alone, and he wasn’t in uniform.

“What are you doing here?” Macquarie demanded. He leaned in the doorway so Grantly couldn’t get through. He looked up and down the narrow passageway outside and only saw a façade of closed doors and graffiti. The single fluorescent light in this part of the passage was cracked and flickering. “Where’s your backup?”

“I’m on a day off,” said Grantly smoothly. “I’ve come to see why haven’t signed in today yet.”

“Really?” Macquarie scratched his chin. “You’ve got nothing better to do with your free time? How’d you even find me?”

“I have my sources,” said Grantly. He smiled. “Are you going to let me in, or are you going to wait until your neighbours see you with an LEO on your doorstep?”

“Fuck the neighbours,” said Macquarie. “You’re not coming in without a warrant.”

Grantly displayed his palms. “Fine. Are you working today?”

 _Working._ It stabbed Macquarie through the guts. _He knows._ 1

 _I know two people,_ thought Macquarie _, and they stand at different ends of the scale entirely. Why do I gravitate towards Leshenko then, and why not Grantly?_

Grantly misread Macquarie’s face.

“Son, is there anyone in there with you?” he asked.

“No,” said Macquarie quietly.

“Then put your boots on,” said Grantly. “I’m buying you a meal.”

 

 

 

 

Macquarie washed his face and hands, and sat on the floor to lace his boots. Grantly waited just inside the door, because Macquarie found he’d been right and he didn’t want word to get out that LEOs visited his squat. Macquarie kept an eye on him though, just to make sure. He watched as Grantly’s gaze flicked around the walls of the squat where Macquarie had written all his words. They all signified one thing or another, but Grantly couldn’t tell what. Macquarie couldn’t either, except when he was floating.

And _Daniel Marsden_ remained out of sight behind the gridscreen, hidden away in obscurity where he belonged.

Afterwards, they headed for the Blue Stairs.

Macquarie passed Railroad’s without looking in. There was a larger world, he held at least a vague memory of it, that extended upwards above Railroad’s, and he discovered that he wanted to see it again. He trailed along in Grantly’s wake.

They stopped momentarily at Security, and Macquarie signed his name in a shaking hand in the bail book.

After that, without questioning it, Macquarie followed Grantly higher into the world. Macquarie let his feet lead him. Let himself be jostled by the crowds.

They took the Blue Stairs upwards, and the things that lay in the levels below faded up where the air tasted cleaner. The squats, the ghetto, Railroad’s and all the rest felt almost like a dream to Macquarie now. The Stairs grew wide in the levels above Security, and they were busier. There was room on the wide landings for street stalls and market stands. The streets off the Stairs were wider as well. Macquarie saw cafes with chairs and tables out the front, al fresco restaurants, and shops with displays outside their wide windows. He saw the porticos and balconies of nice residences. Low ceilings gave way to space. Macquarie felt like he could breathe again.

Macquarie had forgotten what life looked like outside the slum. In all of his disdain for small grey lives he had forgotten they might be more than he thought. Scratch the surface and there was colour underneath.

He had a vague memory of these places, and it was enough to follow.

Macquarie could taste the air of brighter places now, and his heartbeat quickened. 

He felt almost clean, almost human. Almost clear-headed. 2

He chanced on a bookstore. There was a display out the front, a haphazard bargain bin of second-hand volumes. Macquarie stood in front of it, and let his fingers brush along the cracked spines of the books. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of them. Musty and dusty and familiar. He had always loved them.

They signified.

Grantly stood silently some distance away and watched as Macquarie remembered the feel of books.

Macquarie might have stayed and sorted through them, but the shopkeeper stuck his head outside the door and gave Macquarie a narrow glare, and Macquarie remembered what he was. He was out of place up here, and he was attracting the wrong attention.

“Did you bring me up here to shame me?” he asked, turning his eyes to Grantly.

“I brought you up here to feed you, son,” said Grantly. “Come on.”

Macquarie left the books regretfully, and they turned back up the Blue Stairs.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

You don’t belong here anymore than Splayfingers belonged up in the light. It is what it is.  Don’t bother rile against it. They don’t like your type up here. Yours is a filthy disease.

Except addiction is not a disease. It comes on like one, with the fever and the pain, and racks the body and leaves nothing but the shell, but it’s not a disease. It’s a compulsion. It’s possession, and there I go back to demons again, but nothing put them in me but my own self, and that’s something I get to carry every day.

I thought I was stronger than I was. Thought I was cleverer. Thought that I could dodge the bullet, but it caught me right in the guts, and it burrowed there, and festered, and it owns me now. 

I am blood and muscle and ligature and arteries and nerve endings and brain chemistry, and eight to ten days after I die my eyeballs will liquefy.

Perhaps that is the sum of me.  

 

 

 

Macquarie’s skin prickled. He could feel himself being followed. He looked into the shop windows as he passed, checking for a glimpse of Daniel Marsden but the bastard was too clever for that. Macquarie saw nothing but the dull everyday faces that belonged in the old Crewman Quarter. 

“What are you looking for?” asked Grantly.

“No one,” said Macquarie, but he stared into the windows a while longer.

 

_He thought:_

I am changeable. I am mercurial. I blow hot and cold.

I come from all directions _. I_ am the whispering in the walls.

 

 

 

Faces flashed past the windows, and Macquarie watched them in the glass. They flickered past his eyes like images on a screen. Macquarie saw them as though from a distance, disembodied faces rising up from the nebulous depths of the glass. They were like ghosts.

His skin prickled again, and he remembered himself. He shook it off.

He had to keep moving before Marsden caught him. It wasn’t safe on the streets, not even with an LEO beside him. Daniel Marsden was too sly for Grantly.

 

 

 

Macquarie’s breath caught in his throat, and he stopped dead in his tracks. “Listen. It’s Callas singing Madame Butterfly.”

Grantly shrugged, bemused. “Let’s sit over there.” 

 Macquarie took a seat at the corner table, and rested his elbows on the tablecloth. He closed his eyes and listened.  “Madame Butterfly,” he said. “She’s telling her maid that he will come back for her.”3

A slow smile spread across Grantly’s face. Creases appeared at the corners of his eyes. He rearranged the salt and pepper shakers. “What happens then?”

“He betrays her,” said Macquarie. “He breaks his promise. He doesn’t come back. He’s already got someone else.” 

 

 

 

Davey entered Railroad’s and headed for the back room. Leshenko did most of his business out of the back, from his table between the beer barrels and the broom cupboard. It was private.

Davey knocked on the door, and Leshenko opened it. 

Leshenko’s contact was a woman. She was attractive and middle-aged, and not what Davey had been expecting, even though he’d learned long ago not to judge on appearances. Most terrorists though were men, young men, and they blazed fiercely with zeal. This terrorist looked more like a schoolteacher. She was neatly presented. She was wearing makeup and a tailored suit.

There was a gentle fragility about her that Davey didn’t quite believe. In different circles she might have inspired men to lend her their protection, but vulnerability in the Crewman Quarter existed only to be exploited. He knew she couldn’t have been vulnerable though, because he knew exactly why she was there, and his heartbeat quickened.

She was slender and delicate, and her face would have been beautiful once. The autumn shadow of it was still on her, and still alluring.

She looked out of place in Railroad’s. Davey had been expecting someone from the lower levels of the Crewman Quarter, but it was obvious this woman wasn’t from the ghetto.

Davey felt his perspective shift. He readjusted. 

Leshenko had bought the woman a beer, and it sat untouched on the table in front of her.

Macquarie took a seat next to Leshenko. He glanced around the room, but they were alone. She had come by herself. He hadn’t expected that either.

“This is Davey Macquarie,” said Leshenko, “the young fella I was telling you about.”

The woman reached out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Traveller Macquarie. My name is Lara.”

Davey shook her hand. “It’s just Davey, Traveller.”

“Davey,” she nodded, smiling. “Traveller Leshenko has told me all about you.”

Davey doubted that. Leshenko always played his cards very close. It was a pleasantry only, a meaningless pleasantry from different circles.

He nodded. “Leshenko knows my work.”

Leshenko slid a mug of beer over to Davey.

“What do you have for me?” Lara asked.

Davey took a mouthful of his beer. It was flat. “One hundred and nineteen assault weapons, plus ammo. They’re T-48s. Automatic fire, lock-on, night scopes, and unlike the old T-47s they won’t jam when they get overheated.”

Davey tried to sound casual, but his guts were twisting. He’d never made a deal before without Roberts. He thought: _You can do this. You can._

“And how much are you asking?” Lara asked.

Davey shrugged. “Twenty thousand.”

Lara raised her eyebrows. “From what I hear, Davey, you’ve had some trouble with the LEOs, and this deal might be getting very hot for you.”

Davey glanced at Leshenko. Leshenko shook his head surreptitiously.

So Lara had been looking into him already. That was interesting.4

Davey readjusted. “I won’t bullshit you, Lara. This deal has been a whole world of trouble to me already, that’s no secret, but I see no reason to sell myself short. The price stands at twenty.”

Lara folded her hands in her lap. “And if I pass them up, who are you going to sell them to?”

Davey acknowledged her point with a nod.

Leshenko’s eyes narrowed.

Davey scratched his nose. “Fair enough. What are you prepared to pay?”

“Fourteen,” said Lara.

“Seventeen,” countered Davey, “and I’m hardly making a profit.”

Lara searched his face while she considered. Davey found her close scrutiny almost hypnotic. Her gaze felt like a touch.

She held his eyes a moment longer, and then glanced away briefly. The tense line of her mouth softened into a small smile. “Provided the weapons are as you’ve described, then I think we can do business. Where are they?”

Davey relaxed, but knew not to show it.

“They’re already in the Quarter,” he said, “so you needn’t worry about getting past the checkpoint. You meet me tomorrow at nine at Level Three, by Fire Control. Bring the cash, and as many men as you need. Then we’ll go and inspect the goods, and I’ll give you the key for the storage bay, and we’re both satisfied.”

Lara nodded, and extended her hand.

Davey took it. Her palm was cool. Her felt her fingers brush the inside of his wrist and linger for a moment against his pulse.

“It’s been a pleasure,” she said. Her dark eyes were beguiling. Davey reminded himself to be watchful.   

“See you tomorrow,” said Davey.

“Goodbye,” said Lara. She showed him a smile that was both reserved and inviting. Davey didn’t like to guess at her intentions in any one direction or another. She meant to intrigue him, he was certain of that, the attractive older woman against the brash but callow youth and all the promise that entailed. That smile alone should have been enough to intrigue him, but as he watched her walk away and his eyes followed the gentle sway of her hips, at that moment Davey was still thinking of someone else.

 

 

 

 

“I didn’t know you liked opera,” said Grantly while they waited for their food.

Macquarie toyed with the menu. “I like a lot of things. I’m more than you think.”

Grantly only smiled. “So you keep saying.”

Macquarie ran his index finger along the laminated card. “I know you think I’m just the sum of what you see when you run my ident through the grid. Does it amaze you that I’ve read books, that I’ve heard opera, that I don’t just think about my next fix?”

“No,” said Grantly. “I just think it’s a great shame.”

The waitress brought over a jug of water and a plate of bread, and she had hardly set them down on the table before Macquarie helped himself. “Maybe it is, I don’t know.”

Grantly watched him eat. “You seem better today,” he said at last. “When we last spoke, you were almost incomprehensible.”

“I blow hot and cold,” said Macquarie through a mouthful of bread. He swallowed, and grinned. “Sorry. When I get that way, certain phrases come back to haunt me. I always liked that one. I am better, though. I’m managing it more carefully. When I first got out of the Rats’ Nest, I think I went a bit mad with excess, you know. I’m more moderate now than since we last spoke. I’m keeping a more equal footing.”

Grantly poured himself a glass of water. “What’s it like down the Rats’ Nest?”

Macquarie shrugged. “Horrible. Dark, and it stinks, and it’s hot. The Rats will kill a newcomer as soon as look at one as well. Then eat ‘em.”

“How did you survive?”

Macquarie swallowed, and reached for another piece of bread. He held it in midair while he considered the question. “Splayfingers helped me.”

“Who’s that?” asked Grantly.

“He was my friend,” said Macquarie.5He tore off a piece of bread and shoved it in his mouth. He swallowed, pushing it down against the regret that rose like a physical force in his throat. He thought it would choke him, and he tried to laugh it off. “Splayfingers thought that god had told him to save me. Imagine that!”  

He snorted with amusement.

Grantly looked puzzled.

Macquarie looked around as the waitress brought the plates of pasta. He closed his eyes when she put his plate in front of him it smelt so good. He laid aside the rest of his bread and reached for his fork. It felt like he hadn’t eaten real food forever.

“This is good,” he said, burning his mouth.

Grantly ate more slowly. “Yes. I try to eat out once a fortnight at least. You can’t live on rations alone.”

Macquarie, who didn’t even have a ration allocation, only shrugged again and concentrated on his meal. He thought suddenly of the preacher and his soup kitchen, filling the mouths and bellies of the wretched so he could sell them his shiny brand of god, and he wondered what expectations Grantly had of him.

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

Splayfingers saved me because his god told him to. The preacher wanted to save me, because his god told him to. What if they are the same god? What it it’s actually true? What if god exists and he is commanding people to save me?

 

 

 

 _And Marsden’s acerbic voice replied:_ Egotist!

 

 

 

It bothered Macquarie that he had seen a pattern emerge. 

“Do you believe in god?” he asked Grantly suddenly.

“No,” said Grantly.

Macquarie was relived to have removed it from the equation.

 _Eat first,_ he told himself sternly. _Worry about Grantly’s motivation later._

Later came soon enough, as the waitress cleared away their empty plates and took their orders for coffee.

“Yours is a dangerous lifestyle,” said Grantly pensively.

Macquarie sensed the beginning of a moral lecture.

He didn’t bother try and argue the point. “I know when to keep my head down,” he said.

 

 

 

 

Leshenko came along to the deal because he didn’t trust Davey not to do the bolt with the money. Davey stood inside the door and watched as Solomon Day’s faithful foot soldiers checked the weapons. He was careful not to look too closely at their faces. They would be watching for that. They would be watching for any reason at all to break the deal, take the weapons, and leave Davey and Leshenko dead on the floor.

Leshenko was smoking a cigarette. He offered the packet to Davey.

Davey took a cigarette and rolled it back and forth between his thumb and index finger while he searched his pockets for a lighter.

He couldn’t slow his heartbeat today, and was glad Lara’s cool fingers weren’t resting on his pulse at this moment. He was desperate for things to go right.

The minutes crept on, and Davey watched Lara take inventory of the weapons. She looked across at him once, and he watched her watch him.

After a while she walked over to him.

Today she was wearing a blue tailored knee-length skirt, a matching jacket, a white blouse and heels. She was carrying a shoulder bag. Her hair was pinned up loosely, and dark tendrils escaped and floated on the air.

“Everything seems in good order, Davey,” she said. She passed him the shoulder bag.

Davey opened it and looked inside.

“You can count it, if you like,” said Lara with a smile.

“I trust you,” answered Davey.

Her smile lingered.

“Give me that,” said Leshenko, annoyed. He took the bag and whistled in appreciation. “Cash money, my favourite.”

Davey reached inside his pocket and withdrew the key to the storage room.

Lara took it. Davey felt the brush of her fingers against his palm. Her touch was cool.

“We’re done here,” said Leshenko. He had already taken his half of the cash. “I’ll see you around, Davey.”

“Yeah,” said Davey, taking back the bag.  He was aware of Leshenko leaving, and of the movement of Solomon Day’s men behind him, but he only looked at her. He couldn’t break his gaze.

“I think Traveller Leshenko was right,” smiled Lara. “I think that’s everything.”

She made it sound like a question, and Davey’s heart caught in his throat.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. He hypnotised himself with the repetitive scrape of the spoon against the cup and watched a languid whirlpool come into existence and fade away again.

His belly was full. It made him comfortably tired.

Grantly drank his coffee. “How long do you think you’ll last on the path you’re on?” he asked.

 _As long as I want,_ though Macquarie, but he only shrugged and said, “Dunno.” And then he looked Grantly in the eye and said, “What does it matter to you?”

“There’s no easy answer to that,” said Grantly. He sighed. “I’ve been asking myself the same question ever since you reappeared in the world. I feel responsible for what happened to you in custody.”

“I know that wasn’t your fault,” said Macquarie. “You weren’t there.”

“They were my men,” said Grantly. “And I only knew you briefly, son, but you had life in you then. You still had _potential_. The other day when you spoke about suicide, and it being a rational decision, you gave me a lot to think about it. And you’re right. Contemplating suicide doesn’t mean you’re crazy, but Davey, you’re twenty years old. You shouldn’t feel this way about life.”

Macquarie stirred his coffee some more. “It’s simple,” he said. “I exist. There’s no meaning in it except what we put there ourselves to stop from going crazy. We made up god, and work, and art, and a million other things to distract us from the truth. Nineteen generations ago we left a dying planet and now we exist inside this metal shell we made. There is no meaning. You assume that life without meaning is bleak, but it’s not. It’s just life. I’ve dissected it, laid it bare, and it is what it is, not good, not bad, not nothing.”

The tracks on the grid had come full circle.

Grantly tilted his head to listen for a moment, and smiled. “What about Madame Butterfly? There’s always love.” 

“Had it,” said Macquarie quietly, listening to the music soar. Regret was on him now. “Had it and betrayed it. And didn’t go back.”

Grantly didn’t say anything.

Macquarie closed his eyes and murmured, “She dies in the end, you know.”

And he thought, _Betrayal._

 

 

 

 

Davey had never slept with an older woman before, and Lara’s body was a revelation to him. She was unashamed of her physical imperfections. She made love with the lights on.

Davey read the narrow spider’s web of veins on her thigh like a map, and traced them with his fingers. He followed the faded silver lines across her belly with his mouth. He counted the knots in her spine with lingering kisses. 

Her sighing responses to his explorations were gratifying.

She mesmerized him. 

 _“Davey,”_ she murmured languidly, and Davey shook his short-lived guilt away. 

 

 

 

 

“You can’t change me,” said Macquarie some time later as they followed the Blue Stairs back down into the lowest depths of the Quarter. “It’s pointless. Most things are, you’ll find.” 6

“I could force you into rehab,” said Grantly casually, “or a psych ward.”

“You could,” agreed Macquarie. “But that would only be postponing the inevitable. You know I’m a dead man. I’ve run my course. I’m tired of climbing. I haven’t got the stomach for it anymore. I end here.”

“I believe you’re only saying that because you won’t admit I might be right about you,” Grantly replied. His dark face was unreadable. “You climbed out of the Rats’ Nest. That’s one hell of an achievement. You’re a fighter.”

“Not anymore,” said Macquarie.

“Is Agex worth dying for?” asked Grantly.

They passed Security and continued down the Stairs.

“There may be a lot of things worth dying for,” said Macquarie, “but not that many worth living for. Dying takes but a minute. You could stand me up against that wall with a gun to my head and even I could summon up enough pride to go with dignity. World’s full of stories of heroic martyrs. Dying, you have to be strong for just a moment. It’s a different thing to live, though. Lasts so much longer, and there’s not much dignity in it at all.”

“Do you really believe that?” asked Grantly.

“I do,” said Macquarie.

“Most people would tell you it’s a sin to kill yourself,” said Grantly.

“I don’t believe in sin,” said Macquarie. 

Grantly’s smile was tired. “Now there’s a convenient philosophy.”

They paused for a moment as they passed Railroad’s. Macquarie couldn’t see inside through the grimy windows, but he could hear the sounds of the evening’s drunken revelry through the closed doors.

“I’ve never believed in sin,” he said. “Not even when I was virtuous.”

“I’ve seen your record, son,” Grantly reminded him. “You were never virtuous.”

“My motives were,” said Macquarie. “Maybe my methods weren’t, not all the time, not ever maybe, but don’t the ends justify the means?” 

“I don’t know if I believe that,” Grantly said as they turned down the Stairs again.

“They have to,” said Macquarie. “You can’t play the game with your hands tied.” 

The passageway that led to the squat was dark. Someone had smashed out the light since they’d passed this way before. Macquarie knew his way in the gloom. Three years in the Rats’ Nest had given him the knack of picking paths through pitch black.

Grantly walked steadily behind him.

Macquarie reached his door, and searched his pockets for the key. He shoved the door open and reached inside to flick on the light.

He saw all his words on the walls again. _Surprise. Betray. Secret. God. Create._ _Laborious._ And a hundred more. Too many words to count. Too many to make sense. They signified, but there was no cohesion.

It was getting late.

“You should go,” said Macquarie.

“Are you expecting company?” Grantly asked.

“I don’t need you to judge me,” said Macquarie. “I don’t need anyone else to do that. I’ve got that voice right here, right inside my head, and it’s counting down the minutes until my end. Last thing I ever hear will be that voice, _his_ voice, telling me he was right all along.” 7

“Whose voice?” asked Grantly.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Macquarie.

Grantly’s eyes slid over the words on the walls. “You had such potential, son,” he said regretfully.

“I fucked up,” said Macquarie. _Betray._ _Laborious._ “This was never how we planned it. Everything has consequences. It wasn’t meant to be this way, but it is what it is.”

“I’ll go,” said Grantly at last, “but I want to know just one thing.”

Macquarie smiled wearily. “Is this another question about my dealer? You know I won’t go there. Or are you going to ask again if we were selling weapons to Solomon Day, because we weren’t.”

“No,” said Grantly meditatively. “It was something you said at dinner. I want to know why you betrayed the person you loved.”

Macquarie’s smile faded, and he touched the track marks inside his elbow. “That wasn’t me.”

“Who was it?” asked Grantly, a frown creasing his forehead.   

“That was—” said Macquarie, and caught himself before he said it. “That was someone else.”

Grantly was silent for a long while. He regarded Macquarie carefully. At last he said, “Son, who was it?”

“Nobody,” said Macquarie.

Grantly saw the lie.

He let it go.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

1 _Doesn’t matter._

 

 

2Done with the drugs for just this moment, but the blood moves back and forth throughout his body like the tidal pull, the ebb and flow, and every times it circulates the drug vanishes some more, and he knows that sooner or later the need of it will grow strong again, stronger than him. 

 

 

3 _One fine day._

 

 

4His heartbeat quickened again. Interesting, and he felt a small rush of fear for a moment, but it passed. How far did her network reach? Did it snake through secret ways?

He thought: _I’m solid._

Interesting.

 

 

5 Betrayal. That word again.

“Wait! Wait! Too fast!”   

 _I’m sorry, Splayfingers,_ Macquarie thought, _but you don’t belong in the light._

 

 

6 _It’s all pointless. Why does anyone bother? It won’t get you anywhere. Might as well just stay where you are. Might as well keep doing what you want. It all ends the same anyhow, for every single person. Who cares how you live when you’re only going to die?_

_Might as well get back to the squat, and get yourself high as often as you can. It feels good, and you want it, and that’s the only thing that matters in the end._

_It is meaningless. Remember that, Macquarie?_

 

 

7 _He thought:_ You have to keep your secrets, even from Grantly. Doesn’t matter how much it hurts to keep it all inside. You don’t get to have a confessor. That’s the _rules._ You can’t break the rules.

    You’re still better than that.


	9. Chapter 9

Four days later and Macquarie was in detention again, which had become the shape of his life, with no memory of how he’d landed there. He ached all over again, and some places hurt more than others. His probing fingers found brown and yellow bruises on his flesh that did not correspond to any specific recollection.

He didn’t have words for how tired he was. He looked for them, and got glimpses. His brain chased them around but they stayed out of reach, and in the end he let them go and laid his head on the floor and closed his eyes, and breathed.

 

 

_He thought:_

What _was_ last night?

 

 

He remembered Leshenko’s squat and the usual crowd with their usual twisted faces and the noises that they made. None of them had ever assaulted him before. Maybe some of them had wanted to, because people got off in all sorts of different ways, and Macquarie was in no position to judge, but Leshenko had always looked out for Macquarie when he floated. It must have changed though, some time last night.

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

Nothing lasts forever.

You’ve become like that bitch that stabbed you: ugly and wretched and below contempt. Which is it that hurts the most, Macquarie? Is it the ugly? (I know it’s the ugly.) Are you that shallow? (I know you are.) You still had something over them when they liked your face. Now you’ve got nothing.

What does that make you?

You’re more like that girl every day. You’re ugly and you can feel it in you, and you’re desperate to prove you’re not. Desperate to have them want you just for your pretty face.

That’s it then. It’s all over now.

Got no leverage. 1

 

 

Nothing left now to barter away.

 

 

Macquarie opened his eyes again some time after that, and didn’t know if he’d been asleep or not, except that suddenly there was a man standing in front of him who hadn’t been standing there before, and he was wearing dark blue, and the fluorescent lights in the ceiling gave him a golden halo and cast the shadows of the bars across the cold cell floor.

Macquarie sat up and leaned back against the wall, and scrubbed his eyes, and squinted at him.

“LEO Harper,” he said, but he thought:

_Sacha._

The cell door slid back and the shadows crossed the floor.

“How are you feeling today?” Harper asked, and Macquarie tried to gauge the inflections in his tone. He could have done that once, when he was younger, faster, sharper. In a heartbeat he could pick the threads of sincerity out of a voice. Not anymore though.

He couldn’t tell if LEO Harper was sincere, and he wasn’t stupid enough to ask.

“Alright, officer,” he said, and his voice rasped and snagged in his throat. He thought again: _What_ was _last night?_

“I’ll bring you some water,” said LEO Harper, and he closed the cell door again.

He had left him a plastic bowl of sticky rice. There were no utensils, so Macquarie ate with his fingers.

His thoughts cleared with his bellyful of rice.

There were no utensils.

His feet were cold. They had taken his boots and his socks.

His belt was gone.

There was a camera just out of reach outside the bars, watching him with its single eye. Macquarie watched it back and ate his rice.

They were all little things, but Macquarie added them up.

When LEO Harper came back he reached up for the plastic cup of water and said, “Am I on suicide watch?”

Leo Harper leaned against the open cell door and folded his arms across his chest. “Yes.”

Macquarie only smiled again and shook his head slowly.

“What’s so funny?”

“LEOs these days are all so touchy-feely,” said Macquarie. “On paper anyway. Things have changed. In the old days if you told an LEO you were feeling suicidal, they’d hand you the rope.” 2

He shook it off.

“The old days,” said LEO Harper, and raised his eyebrows. His eyes asked the question, but he didn’t say it.

“Twenty,” said Macquarie. “Remember?”

“What?”

“I’m twenty,” said Macquarie. “That’s what you were going to ask, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, maybe,” said LEO Harper. He tilted his head slightly to look at him, as though distrustful of his prescience.

Macquarie thought to laugh at him, but suddenly remembered. Not events, but thoughts. He remembered the words that ran thorough his brain the night before and drilled there like borers. 

 

 

 

_These are the things he thought:_

This isn’t the way I’m meant to be. I’m cleverer than that. I’m smart, I’m trained, and I’ll keep my head when all others around me are losing theirs. I’ll do what you want just as long as you whisper me your secrets and I’ll keep them safe in my mind. This is the way I’ve been made. Mata Hari and all that.

I’m tired. 

I should be a hero, but there’s nothing left except a shell. Just enough to feel, so feeling becomes everything. Slipping and I can’t hold on.

There’s nothing left. Don’t want your pity, don’t want your affection. It’s all gone. Nothing left but the hate. Hate you, hate me, and hate the things we do. I’ve got soul, but you don’t see it. Buried it too deep for any recognition, a soul meets a soul. It’s nothing left but the shell. Hurt me. Hit me. Make me feel something, anything. Make me breathe. Make me bend like a bow towards the pain. Make me feel. Make me live. Make me yours.

Macquarie is a whore, but no more than you.

 

 

 

“I’m not mad,” said Macquarie and showed Sacha Harper his smile, the flash in the pan. “There’s this quote. I don’t remember it exactly though. Do you want to hear it?”

Harper shrugged. “Okay.”

“They said I was mad,” said Macquarie. “I said they were mad. Dammit, they outvoted me.”

He watched Harper turn it over for a moment, and then he gave a cautious smile. Macquarie read that smile as well. Cautious, because Harper was afraid of finding himself on common ground.

“Who said that?” he asked him.

“I don’t remember,” said Macquarie. “Someone who saw through the thin veneer at least. Sanity, insanity, there but for the grace of god and all that.”

“There but for an Agex habit, you mean,” Sacha Harper said.

Macquarie shrugged, and then smiled. “Sure.”

He looked at Harper, and Harper looked back at him with a half-smile that was almost enigmatic, almost interesting, almost a hook.

He wanted to ask _Have you ever fucked a prisoner?_ but he knew what that would make him. He thought Harper was pretty, but didn’t know how to tell him without becoming what he despised. He knew he was below consideration. A grub. If Harper thought in terms of redemption and rehabilitation he would have been a social worker instead of an LEO.

He regretted it for an instant, and then let it go like chaff on the wind.

Harper’s half-smile was enough. Macquarie had no right to ask for more, so he sat in his cell and stole glances at him that meant more than he knew.

 

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Are you falling in love, Macquarie?

I’m not a total idiot, remember? I like to imagine that I might fall in love. It’s a warm deception, until I remember, and then it stings.

You don’t deserve Sacha.

I know.

You didn’t deserve her either.

I know that as well, but I like to imagine. Just now in this time and in this place I like to imagine. I think of shared songs and _One fine day_ and hope and fulfilment, and the bitter aftertaste I’ll worry about later.

And for once Daniel Marsden didn’t have anything to add. Macquarie thought that was because Daniel Marsden was lonely as well and wanted to give himself over to the lie just as much as Macquarie.

 

 

 

 

 

“So, what are you charging me with, LEO Harper?” Macquarie asked him in a conversational tone.

Sacha Harper raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know. I’m not your arresting officer.”

“Who is?” Macquarie asked curiously.

Harper showed him his half-smile again, but this time there was something pitying in it that made Macquarie hate himself. “Don’t you remember?”

And then he did.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie was drunk still, and coming down, and his guts churned like the broiling surface of a storm-tossed ocean. His throat kept constricting and saliva flooded his mouth. He was going to vomit, he knew, and then he saw the street in front of him and saw that he already had.

 _I hope you have,_ said Marsden’s acerbic voice, _or you’re lying in someone else’s_.

The smell of it hit him suddenly, and he pulled himself up onto his knees and was sick again.

He felt wretched.

He thought: _I wish I wasn’t like this. Why am I like this?_

He hurt, but was still too drunk to pick one injury from another. He tried. His arm hurt the most, a sharper pain than the rest of him, and his bleary eyes found a tiny burn there from a cigarette that he didn’t remember being held there. He smelled blood too, over the vomit, but he couldn’t find its source.

He was lying in the street, when the last place he remembered was the squat. He saw that he was a few blocks away now. Someone must have dumped him here.

It was the middle of the night.

It was cold. It was always cold.

He needed to move, but he hurt too much and he was too tired. He couldn’t muster the energy to even draw his limbs closer to his body for warmth, and so he lay there and breathed in the stench of his blood and vomit.

He thought, again, _Why am I like this?_ and remembered. 3

“Fuck,” he said to himself. “Fuck you! All your fucking fault anyway!” And he raged for a moment against him, while Daniel Marsden laughed away at the back of his mind.

He knew he should head back to his squat, but he couldn’t find his feet.

Feet found him in the end, a whole lot of them encased in scuffed boots that passed in front of his field of vision.

“Fuck you, Daniel Marsden,” Macquarie said softly.

“Can you hear me, son?” a familiar voice asked through the noise in his head.

 “Hey, LEO Grantly,” Macquarie said, and managed a smile.

“Where’ve you been, son?” Grantly asked, and crouched down so that Macquarie’s eyes could find his face.

“Down the street,” said Macquarie, and then thought, _Idiot, don’t tell him!_

“Where?” Grantly asked.

“No,” murmured Macquarie.

“Are you alright?” Grantly asked him.

“Low as I’ve ever been, LEO,” said Macquarie, and closed his eyes to shut Grantly out. “Stretched just as thin.”

“Let me help you, son,” said Grantly.

The idea was ridiculous.

“Will you arrest them all for Assault Occasioning Bodily Harm, LEO Grantly?” Macquarie laughed through his pain. “No, not assault. GBH, isn’t it, if the skin is broken? Will you arrest them all for Possession of a Dangerous Drug, LEO Grantly, and of Implements? What about Trafficking? There’s that. Or will you arrest them all for engaging with a prostitute, LEO Grantly? Is that one still on the books after all these years? That book was written by the same men that wrote the preacher’s book, and it’s just as much bullshit.”

 _I like books,_ he thought, _but they’re not real. None of it is._

“I’ll arrest someone if you make a complaint, son,” said Grantly, and his tone of voice said he knew Macquarie wouldn’t.

Macquarie held out his burned arm. “What about for torture? Will you arrest them for that?”

 

 

 

 

Once, a woman had tortured him because that was all the leverage they had at that time. Sabian didn’t buy the truth for nothing, and they needed Sabian at that time.

Tethered to the wall, stripped almost naked, only able to squat or kneel, for hours. Couldn’t lie down, couldn’t rest, and every time his eyes slowly closed he was slapped awake again by the woman’s cane across his shoulders, his chest, his face. For the first hour he pretended it was a game: The cane, the mistress, the handcuffs, and the abuse. He pretended he liked his guts twisting in anticipation, his instinctive flinching, the sharp sting of the cane across his flesh, and the burning. He could train himself to misinterpret. He could trick himself into believing his body was responding to pleasure instead.

And he thought: _Nothing is real. Everything is a construct_.

The woman caught a glimpse of it in his eyes, and before he even realised his mistake she had lunged at him and slashed him across the abdomen.

“Oh, fuck!” There was blood everywhere. His blood. He saw a sea of it before he even felt the pain, and then she had him by the ear, twisting, forcing him down until his full weight was hanging from his wrists.

“I’m not playing,” she hissed. “Don’t think I won’t do it.”

Later there was the harsh light, flicked on and off at irregular intervals, burning his eyes and then plunging him into darkness. Alarms sounded. It made him sick. He had lost all track of time; he had lost all self-possession; he railed against the world, and spat curses.  He didn’t know where he was or what was happening, and the woman’s small acts of compassion amongst the cruelty made him cry. He could not remember anything after that. _What are you doing here?_ _Who sent you?_

“Told you,” he said to her voice when he couldn’t see for the blood in his eyes. “Already told you.”

And Davey did it all for Roberts, and the smile that split his tired grey face at the end of it all was almost worth it: “You right, mate?” Roberts asked.

“Did I pass?” he whispered.

“Flying colours, mate,” Roberts said in his ear. And then he turned to Sabian. “Satisfied now, you son of a bitch?”

“Yeah,” said Sabian. “Get the kid cleaned up and we’ll talk business.”

 

 

 

 

Macquarie thought of torture, and loyalty, and Roberts. _There’s things I do for you that I never did for him,_ he’d told Leshenko, but as it turned out there wasn’t that much difference after all. Just one: back in the day he knew the game, but as it turned out that counted for nothing.

 

 

 

 

“Tell me who they are,” said Grantly some time afterwards, lending Macquarie his arm to lean on as they walked slowly up the stairs.

Macquarie laughed even though it hurt. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. What do you think about that, LEO Grantly? _Fuck!_ What do you think about _anything?_ ”

The cuffs chaffed his wrists.

“Oh, son,” said Grantly in a tired voice. “How far are you going to fall?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Macquarie nodded slowly, and looked at the shadows of the bars cast on the floor by the fluorescent light. “Grantly arrested me,” he remembered. “What for?”

“Drunk, for now,” said LEO Harper. He regarded him curiously. “He keeps giving you cautions, Traveller Macquarie.”

His question remained unasked, but Macquarie heard it anyway: _What makes_ you  _so special?_

Macquarie smiled wryly and picked the last few grains of rice from his bowl. “You’ll have to ask him.”

He showed him his frown again.

 _You shouldn’t answer questions that aren’t there_ , Marsden told him, and Macquarie thought: _There’s more things go unsaid than are said, and they’re as real as the things that get spoken. They are implicit. It’s not crazy to hear them._

 _No, but it’s crazy to answer them,_ Marsden said.

 _Probably,_ thought Macquarie.

Macquarie slid the empty plastic bowl over towards the bars of the cell, and noticed how LEO Harper waited until he had drawn his arm all the way back before he reached for it. He scratched his forearm absently for a moment, his fingers skirting around the edges of the cigarette burn. He discovered that he liked the way it hurt this morning. He pressed the edge of his nail into it, and the intensity of the pain surprised him. It burned again and made his flesh throb. He flinched.

“Don’t pick at it!” LEO Harper told him. He shook his head. “I’ll go and get you something for it.”

“Can I get my socks back?” Macquarie asked. “I’m cold.”

“I’ll ask,” said LEO Harper, and left him.

Macquarie leaned back against the wall, and it was cold. The whole world was cold, except for the Rats’ Nest. Macquarie closed his eyes and thought of it. It was damp there, and warm, and in some places the paths were so hot that they burned underfoot and Splayfingers had to skip across them howling. Even Macquarie had to move quickly, before the soles of his boots began to melt.

The world up here was too cold.

“Homesick for the Rats’ Nest?” he murmured to himself, but couldn’t even raise a smile at the thought of it.

He was cold, and he was tired, and he was stuck in a cell again.

Strange that it rankled more than the confinement Leshenko offered: the squat in the hallway with the broken light and the stream of visitors who didn’t like him to look them in the eye. The difference was the Agex, of course. He didn’t need it now, but he would need it soon, and just the thought of being stuck in the cell while the cravings grew and twisted into withdrawal made his heart beat faster. 

Macquarie held his arm up to the light and looked at the cigarette burn. It was dirty and black, and such a small thing that it still surprised Macquarie it could hurt so much. He pressed around the edges, and it burned. He touched it again in the centre with a fingernail, and almost enjoyed the sudden flash of pain. 

LEO Harper returned to find him testing all his injuries.

“Want to hear a joke?” Macquarie asked him.

He raised his eyebrows. “Sure.”

“This bloke goes to the doctor,” said Macquarie. “He says, ‘Doc, I hurt all over. My knee hurts, my arm hurts, my neck hurts, even my head hurts. Look!’” Macquarie touched his knee, his arm, his neck and his head, and Sacha Harper watched him expectantly. “And the bloke says, ‘What’s wrong with me, Doc?’ and the doctor says, ‘Well, you’ve got a broken finger for starters!’”

LEO Harper laughed, and Macquarie smiled at the sound of it.

“Did you bring my socks?” he asked.

He shook his shook, and reached for the loop of keys hanging off his utility belt. “LEO Grantly says you need to get cleaned up first.”

Macquarie frowned, and climbed cautiously to his feet. “Cleaned up, how?” he asked.

Sacha Harper didn’t answer him. He only slid the cell door open and pointed the way down the hall.

 _This is new_ , Macquarie thought. He distrusted new.

His bare feet made no sound as he walked in front of LEO Harper down the passageway, past the door to reception and through to the dayroom. There was a row of desks there, covered in paperwork and coffee cups and bulldog clips and pens. It was empty except for Weber, who was squinting at a gridscreen and hardly looked up as they passed through. At the end of the dayroom the passageway continued to Grantly’s office. He expected to be lead there, and his footsteps slowed.

“Keep going,” LEO Harper said from behind him, and Macquarie continued on. He passed another door, and another, and then the passageway turned and they were at the bottom of a set of steps. There was a sign on the wall: _Staff only beyond this point._

 _This is new,_ Macquarie thought, wary of the breach of regulations. He stopped, uneasy, and turned around to look at LEO Harper.

“Keep going,” he instructed, and Macquarie remembered that he was new as well. He was so new that it wouldn’t have occurred to him yet that she could break the rules in any meaningful way. Macquarie tried to believe that as he climbed the stairs slowly.

There was a door at the top, and Macquarie climbed towards it.

It opened as he approached it, and LEO Grantly was standing there. He regarded Macquarie for a moment, and then looked past him to LEO Harper. “No trouble?”

“No, sir,” said Sacha Harper. 

Macquarie smiled at his feet. So LEO Harper was a weakness of his that Grantly had spotted, and wanted to exploit. It was sometimes easy to forget how clever Grantly was, because his voice was so sonorous and his face was so kind.

“Come on in, son,” said LEO Grantly, and moved back out of the door.

Macquarie was in two minds. He distrusted Grantly because that was his role in the game, but also this was Grantly who bought him pasta and cigarettes and listened to him talk about opera.

“I have trust issues,” said Macquarie wryly, but this was _Grantly_ , and he stepped through the door in any case.

It was a shower room. Cubicles, and basins, and a row of dented lockers. It was the LEOs’ private shower room.

LEO Grantly took a folded towel from on top of one of the lockers and shook it out. “Get cleaned up, son.”

Macquarie turned his head to look at LEO Harper.

“I’m not shy,” Macquarie told him.

Harper held his gaze, and nodded.

 _This is new,_ thought Macquarie, and began to strip off.

LEO Grantly held out a bar of soap.

Macquarie left his clothes on the floor, and stepped into a shower cubicle. The first burst of water was cold, but it heated up rapidly. Macquarie found he had to hold his injured arm out of the water because the heat reignited the cigarette burn. He closed his eyes and let the water sting his face.

He thought of all the sorts of things that might happen in the bathroom of a Security station, and it turned out he’d done most of those things anyhow and had the scars to prove it. And sometimes nothing more sinister happened in an LEOs’ bathroom than a hot shower.

 

 

 

 

When the cubicle door closed behind him, LEO Harper watched the muscles in Macquarie’s shoulders work as he scrubbed the soap through his scruffy hair. He saw his pale skin marked with bruises, and exchanged a glance with LEO Grantly.

“It’s a dirty life,” said LEO Grantly, softly so that Macquarie couldn’t hear. “You’ll see a lot of them in this Quarter.”

“Yes, sir,” said LEO Harper, and doubted all of them would be afforded the same leniency as Macquarie, or the same luxury.

The unsaid question remained unsaid and Macquarie, only hearing the sound of the water pounding on the tiles, didn’t hear it.

 

 

 

He thought:  _Un bel di vedremo._

The sentiment he disliked, but the sound of it was beautiful.

Butterfly was the victim, but she should never have stabbed herself. Should have stabbed him. He deserved it.

He forgave it though, because it was Callas. The sentiment was wrong, but the sound was so right.

 

 

 

 

 

Grantly had said something Macquarie didn’t hear over the sound of the shower. “What?”

“We talked last night, do you remember?” asked LEO Grantly.

“No,” said Macquarie over the noise of the shower. He didn’t remember much at all about the night before. “What did we talk about, LEO?”

“We talked about Daniel Marsden,” said LEO Grantly.

“What?” Macquarie asked, startled. _Did I say his name?_

 _I’m flattered,_ said Marsden’s acerbic voice.

“Daniel Marsden,” repeated LEO Grantly.

Macquarie paused for a moment, and watched the water drain away around his feet. Then he smiled. “I bet we didn’t.”

But Daniel Marsden said, _Didn’t you?_ and he paused to wonder. 

 

* * *

 

1   Leshenko looked him up and down. “What have you got?”

     “Try me and see,” Macquarie answered.

 

 

2Even if you weren’t. Remember that, Macquarie?

 

 

3He should have known, but he was still naïve in some respects. When he thought of junkies he thought of the scrawny squalid animals that lived under the old Observation Deck. Those were the junkies he’d seen, and that was the sort of junkie he’d become himself one day, but at that time Davey hadn’t known there was any such thing as a functioning addict. Agex was a hard drug. It showed on most people.

Lara had such pale skin. It shone. Sometimes Davey thought that if she held her hand up to the light her flesh would appear translucent. And sometimes she wore a faraway look, anchored with a wistful smile. She was a dreamer, he’d thought, a strange, ethereal fragile dreamer. She seemed wise and sad.

He’d been with her for three weeks before he knew the truth.

In bed one morning, lying tangled in her sheets, he’d woken up as she leaned over him and opened her bedside cabinet. Her body was warm against his chest. He could feel her heartbeat.

The light caught in his eyelashes. He yawned, and was suddenly hungry. It drew him awake.

He shifted underneath her.

“Lie still,” she said.

He stretched. “What are you doing?” He tried to make out what she was holding in her hand.      Suddenly she sighed. “That’s better.”

He saw she was holding an empty syringe in her hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Lara smiled at him, and laid her hand on his stomach. “Agex, Davey. Have you ever tried it?”

“No,” answered Davey.

Her hand trailed up along his ribs. “Want to feel like you’re floating when we fuck?”

And he thought, _A calculated risk_.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Standing in the shower feeling the warm water course over him, Macquarie looked for the night before. He splayed his hands against the shower wall and felt the smoothness of the tiles, and still the night before eluded him. Whatever had happened, whatever he had said to LEO Grantly who now stood on the other side of the cubicle door knowing _something_ , Macquarie couldn’t remember.

Macquarie swore silently. He hated himself more now than after anything he’d ever done since coming into the world again, and those were things so low he hated to name them even to himself. And Daniel Marsden didn’t need to say anything at all, because for once they were in complete accordance. 

 

 

 

 

The night before Macquarie could hardly keep his eyes open. He was lying on his side on the cell floor, one arm outflung, and his head resting on the cold floor. He could still taste blood and vomit, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to sleep.

“Son,” said Grantly, “who is Daniel Marsden?”

There was no answer to that. He had spoken the name in Grantly’s hearing. He didn’t even remember doing it. He thought: _I’ve said too much._

That old cliché stuck its head up for air, and Macquarie acknowledged it with a sardonic smile. He turned the phrase over in his mind and became abstracted. He wondered if he should write it on his wall when he got out, along with all those other things that he’d felt had meaning at the time but in the cold light of day were just as hollow. _The cold light of day._

His smile grew.

They crept up on him when he was unsuspecting these empty phrases, words spoken just to make the silence seem less stark. Conversations hung from them shrivelled and thin, transparent.

“Davey,” said Grantly sternly. “Who is Daniel Marsden?”

“I don’t know where to begin,” mumbled Macquarie into the floor, and smiled. “There’s another one.”

Then he thought: _If I tell you I’ll have to kill you,_ and he became serious again.

“Another what?” Grantly asked patiently.

“Empty phrase,” said Macquarie.

“You’re full of those,” said Grantly. He frowned slightly. “Son, words fall out of you that make no sense.”

“The problem is you think they signify,” Macquarie agreed.

“Most things do,” said LEO Grantly.

Macquarie shook his head, bumping it against the floor. “No, nothing does.”

“Who is Daniel Marsden?” Grantly asked.

“He’s anathema,” Macquarie answered. His thought of the name written behind his gridscreen back in the squat, and imagined that he looked through it and saw his little vials of Agex nestled there. The need of it was coming on again. “He’s been following me for years, treading in my footsteps just a couple of paces behind, and I thought I lost him in the Rats’ Nest but he’s back and he’ll find me.”

“Is he real?” asked Grantly.

Marsden asked, _Is anything?_

“Slow down,” said Macquarie to himself. He raised his injured arm with difficulty, and scrubbed his knuckles against his temples to distract his wild brain. “I don’t know. I know he’s not dead. That’s the problem that I’m having. One of many, but it’s at the root of it all. It all comes back to him. It always has, and it always will. Do you know what that’s like, to be _entwined?_ Those two words, root and entwined, I pulled them from the ether I think, but now they’re heavy with imagery. I can see thin twisting roots snaking through the mouldering earth, breaking through the dirt-encrusted ribcage of a brittle yellow corpse, entwined. He has holes in his skull where the roots have broken though and all his thoughts have drained away. That’s how he’s got me, Grantly.”

Macquarie rubbed his chest gently with the ball of his hand.

“Every time I ask you a straight question you slip away,” said Grantly in a low voice. “I wonder how much of it is due to the drugs, and how much of it is you playing me.”

“I don’t know either,” said Macquarie. He rolled onto his back, and looked up into the harsh fluorescent light. “It happens fast, like a brainstorm that explodes whenever the words try to get out, electricity. It’s a defence, yeah. I don’t think it’s the drugs. I think the defence predates the habit, but it’s the drugs that make me start to ramble in the first place and make the defence apparent. It’s ingrained in me, that defence. It’s instinctive.” He raised his eyebrows. “Funny.”

“What’s funny?” Grantly asked and his voice was tired.

Macquarie shrugged. “I’d keep my lockjaw under torture back in the glory days but it only takes a few weeks on Agex and I’m telling it on the mountain. Telling it to an LEO, which is about as low as I can sink. Get too high and I’ll tell it, get too strung out and I’ll tell it. The equilibrium never lasts. That’s the real trap. You never do feel exactly right again.” He looked at the shadow of the cell bars again, cutting through the light on the floor. “I like to talk,” he said.

Grantly shook his head slowly. He said, at last, “I can’t do anything for you this time, Macquarie. I think we’re done. You’ll have to front the magistrate this time.”

Grantly turned away.

Macquarie felt a flash of panic. “I’m ready,” he said suddenly. “I’ll tell you.”

That caught Grantly’s attention, and held it. Macquarie knew it would. Grantly turned back to face him. His face was sceptical still, but he had turned back.

“Go on,” he said.

“How about a smoke?” Macquarie asked.

Grantly searched his pockets, and then passed a packet through the bars. He held a lighter ready in his hand.

Macquarie rolled back onto his side, and slowly pulled himself up onto his hands and knees. He swayed there for a moment, before shuffling on his knees over towards the bars. He took the packet and extracted a single cigarette.

“You’d better start talking, son,” Grantly said.

Macquarie smiled.

“The problem with Daniel Marsden,” he said as he rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, “is that he was a true believer.”

He lifted the cigarette to his ear and tilted his head to listen to the dry rustle of the tobacco. After a moment he smiled, as though the sound was pleasing and new.

Grantly let his fingers encircle the bars of the cell. “Do you mean politically?”

Macquarie nodded. “A true believer. Hand over heart, swearing oaths to the Navigator. Listening to the broadcasts on his birthday, and knowing all the anthems. _Here’s to looking outwards_ and all the rest. A true believer, Grantly, and there’s not many of those about these days, you know.”

“I like my world less black and white,” Grantly replied.

Macquarie smiled again. “Sure you do, but you’ve always dealt in shades of grey down here. Up there they’d have it that you’re either a friend to the Consulate or an enemy. Daniel Marsden was a friend. I wasn’t. In a way I was better off than him. True believers fall harder than the rest of us when they lose their faith.”

Grantly frowned slightly. “Is this relevant?” he asked.

“It all signifies,” said Macquarie, and leaned across so that Grantly could light the cigarette. 

“Fine,” said Grantly, sounding tired of the word. He pocketed the lighter again.

Macquarie drew on the cigarette and thought fast. It was almost an echo of the glory days, when he could spin a tale in a single heartbeat and believe it in two.

“It was Roberts, it was all Roberts,” he said.1 “Roberts wanted to sell weapons to Solomon Day.” The LEO had been waiting years to hear it: “You were right.”

Macquarie looked up at Grantly, and couldn’t read his expression at all.

“Did you hear me, Grantly? I said you were right.”

“So who is Daniel Marsden?” Grantly asked.

“Daniel Marsden worked for the Tax Office of all places, fuck, can you imagine that? Some fucking accountant figuring Roberts because of too much money in his bank account?” Macquarie laughed, amazed, and almost believed it himself.  “He came to interview Roberts,” he said, “to audit him. And we could tell that he just _knew_.”

“And then?” asked Grantly mildly.

“And then I killed him,” answered Macquarie.

Macquarie thought: _Did I kill him?_ Fuck it, _I said,_ kill Marsden. _So how did it come to this?_

Grantly was silent for a long while, and then he suddenly smiled like he knew it was a lie. “What has that got to do with Madame Butterfly?”

 

 

 

 

_Macquarie thought:_

He’s got you there.

Then bareface lie your way out. You’ve done it before.

Remember that, Macquarie?

 

 

 

 

 

“I couldn’t kill him at our place,” said Macquarie, and could almost see it in his memory. “So I followed him. He had a place up in Production, before it was bombed, in a real good neighbourhood. And he had this girlfriend, pretty, and sweet. She looked so _nice,_ you know, that I thought I couldn’t kill him. Couldn’t break her heart.” He smiled at the sceptical look on Grantly’s face. “I was still a kid then. I still had poetry.”

“What happened?” Grantly asked.

Macquarie shrugged. “I followed him some more, and I saw that he was screwing around on her. She didn’t deserve that. I could see that, even if she couldn’t. She knew what he was doing, and she didn’t even get mad.” He raised his eyebrows. “Imagine that.”

 

 

 

Marsden said:

_I like the way you lie, Macquarie. You skirt so close to the truth, but you never do tell it. I’ve always liked the way you lie._

 

 

 

 

He never saw her angry and she should have been. She should have flown at Daniel Marsden like that junkie bitch did at Macquarie; a maenad, wild hair and ragged nails and screaming, except she’d never had that poison in her.

He imagined Allegra floating under dark water, her hair flying, her face pale, and thought that there was a resemblance to that feral girl, probably what had attracted him in the first place,2 except Allegra had never known those depths, and never would like Macquarie did, and could have shown her, a grinning demon’s tour of hell.

But she’d never had that poison in her, not the anger and not the drug. Should have, thought Macquarie. Should have got angry, should have got even, should have blazed like fire but she didn’t. She only smiled, and sighed, and touched his face and said: _It doesn’t matter._

It made Macquarie angry. Daniel Marsden hadn’t deserved her forgiveness. Allegra didn’t hate him so Macquarie did. It started there, and it began to burn.

It woke him up at nights.

 

 

 

 

Grantly stood for a while with his hands curled around the bars of the cell, and he looked at Macquarie. For a long time Macquarie thought the lies had rung true, and then suddenly Grantly shook his head and smiled.

“You’re playing me.”

“I’m not,” said Macquarie.

“Do you know what your problem is, son?” Grantly asked. “You lie. You lie so much you wouldn’t even recognise the truth anymore.”

 _He’s right,_ said Marsden.

_Shut up. 3_

“I’m not lying, I swear! Don’t put me up in front of the magistrate, Grantly,” Macquarie said, and this time the desperation was real. “I don’t want to go to detention.”

Grantly shook his head and smiled. “Detention’s a second home to you, son. You’ve spent half your life there.”

“It’s not,” said Macquarie. “I haven’t.”

“Don’t bullshit me, son,” said Grantly, and turned away again.

The lie was another betrayal. Macquarie saw it and regretted it.

Macquarie felt a strange sort of solidarity with Grantly, simply because they both remembered a single day when their lives had intersected and they both still felt the repercussions.

They both lived in the past.

It wasn’t nostalgia. The glory days or the bad old days, Macquarie couldn’t tell. But he’d known the game back then. He’d been on top of it.

Grantly was the same, maybe. He thought he’d had his finger on the pulse. Thought he’d known his crew. He’d trusted them not to cross the line.

Another betrayal, and it seemed like Grantly was tired of them.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie turned off the shower at last, and opened the cubicle door. LEO Harper averted his eyes. LEO Grantly held out the towel, and caught Macquarie’s wrist as he reached out for it. His grasp was firm, and Macquarie looked away as Grantly turned his arm and looked at the cigarette burn.

“You’re a mess,” said Grantly at last, and released him.

“Yeah, well,” said Macquarie, wrapping the towel around his waist. He was hurt, sure, but he’d had a feed and a shower, and at the moment he wasn’t thinking too much about Agex. That was good. That was as good as Macquarie ever got it nowadays.

Mentally was a different story, but it always was with Macquarie.

Grantly motioned him over to the basins, and Macquarie followed. He let Grantly take his arm again, and drew breath sharply through his teeth as Grantly held his arm under the tap. Water coursed over his burn.  It wasn’t hot, it wasn’t even warm, but it burned all the same.

“Fuck!” Macquarie exclaimed, but Grantly did not release him.

LEO Harper appeared beside them with an uncapped a bottle of antiseptic. Grantly took the bottle in his free hand and poured the cloudy liquid over Macquarie’s wound. Macquarie pulled his arm free, and blew on it. “Fuck!”

Grantly only smiled grimly, and at last released him.

Macquarie scowled at him. He moved away from the basins and stooped down to pick up his clothes, but LEO Grantly shook his head. Grantly opened one of the lockers, and withdrew a fresh set of clothes: faded blue cargoes, ex-LEO issue, and a grey t-shirt and a pair of boxers and a pair of socks. The boots were his own, but they had been cleaned.

Macquarie dressed. He smelled of soap and starch now. He smelled clean, and he liked it. It wouldn’t last, but he liked it.

“What will this cost me?” he asked Grantly.

Grantly smiled slightly. “You and I are going to have a talk, son.”

 _There’s always something_ , Marsden reminded him.

 

 

 

 

 

Back in Grantly’s office, Macquarie took a seat. Grantly sat opposite him and rested his hands on his desk. LEO Harper stood behind Macquarie, and he liked that he was so close. He imagined between them a history that had never happened and never could.4

Macquarie shook the fantasy away. It was hollow.

“Let’s begin,” said Grantly. He inhaled. “There is no such person as Daniel Marsden.”

“You ran his name?” Macquarie asked, glancing at the gridscreen. “Shouldn’t have.”

“He doesn’t exist,” said LEO Grantly firmly.

Macquarie felt his guts twist. He tilted his head to listen for the whispering in the walls, and heard nothing. “You shouldn’t have.”

“He doesn’t exist, son,” said LEO Grantly. He narrowed his eyes. “Well?”

Macquarie shrugged.

“Did you think I wouldn’t check?” Grantly asked.

Macquarie regrouped.

“Dunno what I said last night, LEO, but I wasn’t in my right mind,” said Macquarie. He flashed a wry smile. _Play it right,_ he told himself, or Marsden did. _Play it like the drug-fucked junkie you are, because time is against you now._ “Well, you know the problems I have in that direction. I wasted your time, sorry. I dunno what you expect me to say.”

“You told me that you killed a man who doesn’t exist,” said LEO Grantly in his sonorous voice. He ran one hand over the keyboard of the gridscreen lightly, but didn’t look away from Macquarie. “Why would you say that?”

“I was freebasing last night,” said Macquarie and his eyes followed the path of Grantly’s fingers across the keys. He sighed at the thought of the drug, and closed his eyes briefly. “I won’t tell you how to do your job, Grantly, but, fuck, I was well gone. I don’t even remember the things I said.”

“You also said that you that you and Roberts were trying to sell weapons to Solomon Day,” Grantly said smoothly.

 _Christ, Macquarie!_ Marsden exclaimed. _You are off the fucking chain!_

Macquarie smiled despite himself. “Yeah, probably just what you wanted to hear. Ever heard of sodium amytal? It’s in Agex. They used to think it was a truth serum, but that’s bullshit. All it does is lower resistance, until you’ll do anything or say anything.”

“Were you trying to sell weapons to Solomon Day?” Grantly asked.

“No,” said Macquarie, and the old lie just rolled off his tongue. “Solomon Day was a terrorist. We were a lot of things, Roberts and me, but credit us with a few scruples, please.” He laughed suddenly, because that was what people did in absurd situations, when LEOs threw wild accusations at them. “Look at us! Solomon Day is dead and gone, and you’re still hung up on him like it’s the day after the Production bombing. Let it go, Grantly, the rest of the world has.”

 _Strange that you believe all the shit I talk when I’m high or coming down,_ he thought, _but you never did believe that one lie, so earnestly told so many times._ And he remembered the first time he’d told the lie. _Believe it_ , he’d willed the LEO desperately, _believe it._

He thought, _Maybe I was never as good a liar as I thought. Not for Grantly anyhow. How come he saw through me?  What makes him so different?_

Macquarie looked at him and wondered. The same dark face as always, unreadable as always. The tired lines around the eyes. The grey hair at his temples. And Macquarie saw something he hadn’t seen there before. He saw the end of the line.

Grantly only smiled slightly. “I’m going to give you two choices now, son, and you’re not going to like either one.”

Macquarie waited, still listening to the silence behind the walls.

Grantly looked at him sternly. “You can either go up in front of the magistrate, and probably end up in detention with your record, or you can go into rehab.”

“You’re right,” Macquarie said. “I don’t like either of those.”

He wasn’t angry. He knew he’d used up all the favours Grantly’s guilty conscience gave him. Used them up a long time ago, truth be told, but Macquarie had never turned down a favour before, whether it was owed or not. That was just common sense. Even Grantly though, who’d locked him in a cell and gone home for the night without a thought for what might happen, wasn’t a bottomless pit.

 _Time is against you,_ Marsden reminded him.

Macquarie rubbed his temples. The fear came on like a sickness, like being strung out. He felt off kilter all at once, like he was being buffeted again from all sides. He breathed heavily, and found himself looking at the seams in the wall, the ceiling, the door and the air vent.

 _Game face,_ Marsden said. _Remember?_

 _I’m all over it_ , Macquarie assured him.

Grantly was looking at him expectantly.

“Rehab,” said Macquarie, and hated the word. It was needy. It was an admission of defeat. It was a betrayal of the thing he loved.

Grantly smiled again, and couldn’t have known Macquarie’s motivation. “I’m glad,” he said. “It’s a six week program, son, and a secure facility.”

Macquarie hated it even more.

“When you get out, we’ll talk some more,” said Grantly.

“Okay,” said Macquarie. “Thanks.”

“Good luck,” said Grantly.

“Thanks,” Macquarie repeated.

 _Jesus,_ said Marsden. _Activities and therapists and group sessions and crying about daddy. Can you just imagine it? When did the world get so touchy-feely?_

 _You used to be touchy-feely yourself, in your own way,_ Macquarie reminded him.

 _That was a long time ago,_ said Daniel Marsden, and Macquarie thought he heard a tone of regret in his voice.

He’d touched a raw nerve. 

 

 

 

 

 

The day wore on, and LEO Grantly filled it with paperwork and put Davey Macquarie out of his mind.  He looked over the logs from the previous shifts, and saw that there had been trouble at Railroad’s. Just another drunken bar fight, because people never learned, no matter how many times they were dragged up in front of the magistrate. It was always the same names.

Grantly tapped the pads of his fingers along the crisp edge of the typed report.

At least none of his crew had been hurt. They were good kids, his crew, and Grantly smiled because they would hate it if they knew he thought of them as kids. When he looked at them, he could see childhood in their faces even if they thought they’d left it long behind.

_0207: Street check completed on Gregory Wassermo._

They were kids. They didn’t even know how to spell Wosomo, and hardly a month went by when old Greg wasn’t pleading his case in front of the bench. The names of the grubs in the Crewman Quarter were like a secret language Grantly’s crew hadn’t learned yet.

His crew were kids, mostly new recruits from other sectors because nobody lasted too long in the Crewman Quarter. Grantly had though. He’d made it his life’s work, not because it was his passion but because he’d started out here and hadn’t moved on and now it felt like home. Twenty years he’d been in the Crewman Quarter. Most of his crew would have been in primary school the day that Grantly had first strapped on his utility belt, learning their earnest affirmations with their hands over their hearts and drawing pictures of the Navigator. Sacha Harper wouldn’t have even been born yet.

Grantly didn’t remember getting old, just like he didn’t remember getting dishonest. Time had worn away at him though, just like the little procedural lapses. The days had become years, and the lapses had become larger transgressions. Now he was grey at the temples and comfortable with the level corruption his job required.

He looked up as his door opened.

“Someone to see you, sir,” said LEO Connolly. 

LEO Grantly rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and looked up from his paperwork. The flicking light overhead was giving him a headache. “Who is it?”

Connolly made a face. “A Journeyman, sir,” he said.5

Grantly felt a stir of interest. He wondered what business the Journeymen might have in the Crewman Quarter. “Send him through,” he said.

He was not what LEO Grantly expected. The Journeyman was a short, spry man with friendly eyes and a quick smile, and he shook Grantly’s hand firmly.

“Traveller Finch, LEO Grantly, pleased to meet you,” said the Journeyman.

“What can I do for you, Traveller?”

Traveller Finch looked almost apologetic. “Last night, LEO Grantly, you checked the name Daniel Marsden on the grid.”

“Yes,” said Grantly. He’d run the name through after Macquarie had mentioned it, looking for just a grain of truth and never really expecting to find one.

Traveller Finch nodded. “It raised certain, _ah,_ flags in the Consulate.”

“Really?” Grantly asked, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t even get a hit on it.”

“Well, quite,” said Traveller Finch. “Would you mind if I asked where you heard the name?”

“From a junkie,” said Grantly. He folded his arms across his chest. “From the man who says he killed him.”

“Killed him?” Finch asked, blinking in the light. “Killed _Marsden?_ ” He laughed suddenly. “No, no, Marsden isn’t dead.”

Grantly frowned.

“Who is this man?” Finch inquired.

“A local junkie called Davey Macquarie,” said Grantly. “I’ve just sent him to rehab.”

“Really?” Finch breathed. “Now that is _interesting_.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his last few minutes as a free man, Macquarie walked up the Blue Stairs with LEO Harper and LEO Weber on either side of him. He smoked a cigarette while he still could, and wished he could have just one more night at Railroad’s, to really go out in style. Time was running out though for Davey Macquarie, and he turned his mind instead to secret and laborious ways.

He thought: _Crossed swords against your name._

As he walked, he exchanged words with LEO Harper and LEO Weber in his old easy manner, keeping his wildest thoughts to himself. _Game on_ , he thought, but didn’t let them see his smile.

They stepped off the Blue Stairs.

Rehab was near the medical station. Every step brought them closer. Macquarie tensed, but didn’t let them see that either.

“This whole street used to be pushers,” Macquarie told them, knowing that they had not been long enough in the Quarter to contradict him. “Pushers and hookers, until the LEOs cleaned it up and sent them all below Railroad’s. Then they reopened the ration station and the entertainment hub.”

The square was quiet midmorning. Macquarie saw a pair of office workers window shopping on their break. Some schoolkids headed into the arcade. The café was still closed, the chairs stacked on the tables inside the windows.

“You know Railroad’s is called Railroad’s because the light rail used to end there?” Macquarie asked them. “That was before my time even.”

 _Move,_ said Marsden’s voice. _They’re coming for you._

 _Don’t panic,_ Macquarie told him.

Macquarie saw the entrance to the shopping mall, and his heartbeat quickened. Their steps took them closer and closer to the shopping mall.

 _Hey, Macquarie,_ said Daniel Marsden, _do you remember how to set your feet on laborious ways?_

“That playground,” Macquarie said, and pointed, “there used to be a bank there, until the Consulate closed it when the Quarter went onto rations and credits. There were riots that week, and the whole place got smashed up.”

The LEOs looked, trying to glimpse a shadow of the bad old days, and in that instant Macquarie ran.

He had a few seconds’ start before the LEOs realised their mistake, but it was all he needed. Harper and Weber were both on his heels as he dived into the shopping mall. He could hear Weber gasping into his radio, and the burst of static it returned.

They wouldn’t catch him.

He felt wild, alive, and he couldn’t help grinning as he leapt a bench inside the mall and headed for the interior stairs. His instinct had kicked in again, and he was back in the game.

LEO Harper shouted at him, and he didn’t catch the words but his outrage was clear.

 _Sorry, Sacha,_ he thought, and passed the ration station. Despite the hour there was already a queue, and Macquarie pushed through them. Howls of indignation followed him. He was exhilarated. He cleared the ration station and saw the interior steps in front of him. They led upstairs to more shops, and other places besides.

Macquarie threw himself into the stairwell. He heard the pounding footsteps of the LEOs behind him. They were gaining, but they would not be fast enough.

“There’s no way out!” LEO Weber shouted at him.

He needed to lose sight of them, just for a second. He found a burst of speed he didn’t know he had. He felt strong again, and fast again. The glory days were long gone, but, just now, just in this minute, it felt like it did back before everything went to shit.  

Macquarie felt his perspective shift.

Macquarie saw his world view clearly again, in three dimensions. He saw the massive hive of the world, and saw his place in it. He saw secret ways, and heard the whispering in the walls.

 _Now would be a good time,_ said Marsden.

Macquarie made it past the last of the shops, and crashed through a set of fire doors.

_Level Eight, Crewman Quarter, Public Mall, second level, fire doors, turn left. A6, B12 and D3._

He saw the world view, and laughed.

 

 

 

 

LEO Harper was out of breath even as he pushed the fire doors open. Macquarie could hear him panting. Weber was right behind him.

“It’s a dead end,” Weber said.

Macquarie heard them, and was sure they would hear his heart beating.

“Did he come in here?” Sacha Harper asked, and Macquarie felt regretful at the rising panic in his tone.

 Weber said something in a low and desperate tone that Macquarie didn’t hear.

“If it’s a dead end, Weber, then where the fuck _is_ he?” Sacha Harper shouted, and it sounded to Macquarie as though he was on the verge of tears.

 

 

 

 

 _Hey, Macquarie,_ said Marsden in his head later on, _which one of us is the bad guy?_

Macquarie laughed and found that his feet remembered secret paths after all. _I don’t remember._

 

 

 

 

 _Look at us,_ he thought later still. _Look at us now, Daniel. We’re ghosts._

 

* * *

 

1“That arsehole,” said Davey.

“Don’t speak ill of the dead,” said Roberts without looking up.

 _Another betrayal_.

 

 

2  Macquarie was no romantic. Sure, she had a certain resemblance, enough to attract and repulse him in equal measure. But it was the squat that had lured him most of all, the squat, and the mattress, and the sharp-edged tins of food she hoarded like a rat.

Macquarie kept his priorities straight, even at his worst.

 

 

3But Marsden kept talking as always, however much Macquarie tried to ignore his voice.

_Do you know why he doesn’t see you as a killer, Macquarie? Because he only ever sees the victim, that pathetic squib of a kid the LEOs left lying on the floor, crying like a fucking child. He never sees your real face, just that one you showed him that day without meaning to: frightened and pathetic and alone._

_Why don’t you cry, Macquarie? He’d like that._

 

 

4He thought, I _would die for you_ , and not just because he was about to come. It wasn’t the only reason he held her tighter than before, and breathed the words into her ear.

 _Die for you_ , he thought, _and kill for you. I’m your slave_ , which had always been his problem.

Something shifted, and he imagined lying together with Sacha Harper, tangled up in the sheets someplace where the air tasted cleaner.

_Do you love me?_

_Forever._

_Forever and ever?_

And then Marsden ruined it: _It never happened like this. It’s not real. It’s not_ her _. You’re not allowed to do this._

Macquarie hated him because he was right _._

 

   

 

5 _Beyond the blast doors where the Journeymen  go,_

_There is a path that the Journeymen know._

_It winds though the ways that the world has forgot,_

_And that’s where the Journeymen go to rot._


	11. Chapter 11

Friday

 

 

 “I’m going to marry that girl,” said Daniel Marsden when he saw her across the empty bar, collecting glasses.

“Are you drunk?” asked Harry Dean.

“No,” said Daniel. “I’m serious.”

Harry Dean looked at his watch. “You’re always serious, Daniel. It’s why you have no friends.”

“Piss off,” said Daniel with a smile, and Harry laughed.

Daniel turned his head to look again at the girl. She was dark-haired and pretty, and he thought he’d seen her somewhere before. She was stacking glasses, and wearing a look on her face like she was a million miles away. Daniel envied her that. He wondered what she was thinking about as she went about her work.   

“ _This_ close,” said Harry Dean repeated, his thumb and forefinger pressed together.

“Sorry, what?” Daniel asked, aware that whatever it was Harry had said it at least twice. He looked at the bottom of his glass and couldn’t remember finishing his beer. Maybe he was pissed after all.

“I’m this close to quitting,” said Harry.

“Really?” asked Daniel, leaning on the bar and gesturing to the barman for another beer.

“Jesus, Daniel, I’m forty-six years old,” said Harry Dean. “I can’t take much more of this shit.” He caught the barman’s eye. “And another for me, thanks.”

“At least you slept on the train,” Daniel reminded him.

“And missed the sandwich trolley because of it,” Harry Dean said. “You could have woken me for that. I could eat the crotch out of a low-flying duck.”

“Nice,” Daniel grimaced. “You’re a poet, Harry.”

Harry downed his beer and grinned. “I’m only staying for the speeches,” he said. “And the food, and then I’m out of here.”

Daniel nodded and thought of his bed. “Yeah, I could use an early night.”

“I’m not going home,” Harry told him, and looked at his watch again. “That would be a mistake. What is it now? Four p.m. If you go to bed now, you’ll wake up again at some ungodly hour of the morning, and you’ll screw your body clock for the rest of the week.”

Daniel collected their drinks, and leaned with his back against the bar. He smiled slightly, knowing exactly where this was going. “What does the voice of experience say?”

Harry raised his glass. “Cheers.” He took a mouthful of beer. “The voice of experience says to hit the piss until at least midnight, and then you’ll be right tomorrow.”

“The problem with that,” said Daniel, feeling himself sway slightly, “is that it’s never midnight with you, is it? It’s always five in the morning, and I’m still sleep deprived the next day and hung over as well.”

Harry waved his hand. “But you’ll sleep tomorrow night like a dream.”

“I could sleep now like a dream,” said Daniel regretfully, and checked his watch again. “What time is this thing meant to kick off?”

“Five.”

It was Benyon’s farewell, and Daniel was glad to have made it back in time. He was tired of working away from home. The money was good, but he was tired of it. He was just tired. At the moment he felt like Harry Dean, ready to quit. He told himself he could always get a job stacking shelves at a rations depot as long as it paid the bills. It was a lie, though. He knew he wouldn’t last a week he’d hate it so much.

He knew, as well, that it was just his sleep deprivation putting those ideas in his head. He would feel differently in the morning.

He trusted, more or less, Harry Dean and his voice of experience, but the problem with hitting a club with Harry was that they never left until Harry was ready, and that was always too late for Daniel. It was always a good night, but it always cost too much, lasted too long, and took at least a day to recover from. He knew that if Harry was honest with himself he’d realise it wasn’t the working away from home that wore him out, it was the nights out when he got back.

Daniel told himself that he would be home and in bed by midnight at the latest this time, whatever Harry said. He only had to fight sleep for another eight hours first. That would be the hardest thing.

He was annoyed that they’d arrived so early at the pub. He knew though, that if he’d dragged himself home for an hour or so, he would have fallen asleep on his couch and missed the whole thing. Instead he and Harry had headed back to Harry’s flat, which was handier to the bar, and Daniel had dumped his bag there, showered and shaved, and borrowed a suit that was a fraction too baggy on him. They’d left again before their tiredness could catch them.

Daniel wanted so much to sleep, but he’d promised Ruth he’d try and make it.

Ruth had organised the entire farewell, at short notice as well, and even with all the social club funds at her disposal it had been hard to find a place willing to close on a Friday afternoon for a private function. But Ruth was the office miracle worker. She’d tried the places closest to work first, but in the end it was a small bar on the second level of a shopping arcade off the Green Stairs in the Commission.  

Daniel was pleased Ruth had found the place though, because the girl with the dark hair paused for a moment as she cleaned up, and looked over at him and smiled shyly. She had dark hair and green eyes, and Daniel was going to marry her one day.

 Harry carried his beer over to the jukebox, and stood there hypnotised by the flashing lights.

The dark-haired girl crossed the empty dance floor and moved in behind the bar.

“I’m going on my break,” the barman told her.

“Okay,” she said. She perched on a stool behind the bar and opened a dog-eared paperback.

“Hi,” Daniel said to the girl. “I’m Daniel.”

She placed her book down and reached across the bar to shake his hand. “I’m Allegra,” she said. She tilted her head and regarded him curiously with those green eyes. “You don’t look old enough to be a Taxation Investigator,” she told him.

“It’s my baby face,” he told her, and she laughed. She didn’t believe that he was almost twenty, and he reached around his neck for the lanyard with his Consulate ID to prove it before he remembered he didn’t have it. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“Well, Daniel Marsden, Taxation Investigator, can I get you another drink?” she asked. “ _If_ you’re legal age.”

He laughed at that. “Another beer, thanks, Allegra,” he said, and liked the way her name sounded.

“You’d better get them in quickly,” Allegra told him with a smile. “I’ve seen how you public servants drink, so the bar tab won’t last long.”

“I’ll do my best,” Daniel told her, and raised his glass. “Cheers.”

He went over to join Harry at the jukebox. Harry was punching the buttons fixedly, flipping through the catalogue and keying in the songs he wanted to hear. Daniel took a seat at one of the small tables, and tried to stay alert.

Ruth was the first one to arrive, with her son, and Daniel rose to meet her. 

“Mark’s working,” Ruth told Daniel, bundling the toddler towards him and looking for something in her handbag. “I couldn’t get a sitter, so I’m not staying long, and I’m definitely not drinking.”

“Famous last words,” Daniel told her, looking over the top of the toddler’s head to where Allegra was standing behind the bar. She saw him looking holding the toddler, raised her eyebrows, and Daniel looked at Max and shook his head emphatically. He liked the way he saw her laugh, even though the sound didn’t reach him. 

“And one for you, Ruth,” Harry said, appearing at her elbow with a glass.

“Well, maybe just the one,” Ruth said, taking the drink. “Have you only just got back? I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

“Of course,” Harry said, and laughed. “Listen to her, Daniel! Like we’d let work get in the way of free drinks!”

Ruth looked him up and down. “You look like shit, Harry,” she said.

“Cheers,” said Harry, raising his glass.

Daniel shifted Max onto his other hip, until Ruth remembered him and held out her arms for her son. She held him on one hip with a hand under his backside, holding her drink in her free hand.

“Mummy’s,” she said sternly when he tried to reach for it.

“I’ll get him something,” said Daniel, and it was an excuse to head back to Allegra at the bar.

“Hi again,” he said.

“Hi,” she said, and her smile was wider this time.

“Can I have a juice or something, please, for my friend’s son?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Allegra. “I think we’ve got plastic cups out the back.”

When she was gone, Daniel leaned over the bar to try and see what book she was reading. She’d left it open though, with a glass resting on the pages to keep it that way, and he couldn’t tell what it was. He’d thought that would be a way to open a conversation, hopefully he’d read the book as well, and he might have been able to come up with just the right comment about it, to make him sound smart, and funny, but not a snob. He kicked himself though, when she came back with the plastic cup of juice, because his tired brain had neglected the obvious.

“What are you reading?” he asked.

“ _Remembrance Of Things Past_ ,” she said. “Have you read it?”

“No,” said Daniel.

“I have to read it for class,” said Allegra, and made a face.

Daniel realised then where he’d seen her before. “You go to the college?” he asked. “You get the 11.27 from Central, right?”

“That’s right,” she said, and her smile grew. “Every Wednesday and Friday. I _thought_ I knew you from somewhere. You always sit in the back carriage as well.” She tilted her head on an angle. “I thought all you public servants worked nine to five.”

“I wish,” said Daniel with a wry smile.

When Daniel finally got back to Ruth with the cup of juice for Max, Ruth only raised her eyebrows at him knowingly.

By five o’clock everyone had arrived, and Traveller Finch gave his speech. It was the same one he gave at every farewell. It was the one where he carefully avoided speaking about happy retirement, about hobbies Benyon could now take up, about the future. Daniel had heard it enough times before, so he and Ruth and Harry stood at the back by the jukebox and nursed their drinks.

Harry craned his head to look at Benyon who was sitting at one of the tables with his wife and daughter, proudly inspecting his medal and certificate from the Navigator’s Office. “He doesn’t look too bad,” he said after a while.

“He starts chemo next week,” Ruth told him in an undertone.

“Bugger,” said Harry, and raised his glass for Finch’s toast. “To the Navigator. To looking outward.”

“To the Navigator. To looking outward,” said Daniel as well, and when the toast had ended his glass was empty. He gravitated back towards the bar. His head was fuzzy, and he cautioned himself about that.

“Another one, Daniel?” Allegra asked him.

“Just a water, thanks,” he said.

She turned to the fridge and said, over her shoulder, “Are you slowing down?”

He smiled at the polished surface of the bar, liking the gently teasing tone of her voice. “Well, it’s either switch to water now, or end up dancing on the bar with my clothes off.”

She laughed, turning back with a bottle of water. “Well, that wouldn’t be all bad, I’m sure.”

“You’ve never seen me dance,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows as she took the top off the bottle of water. “And now I never will. Shame.”

Whatever he was going to say, and he wasn’t sure what, caught in his throat because at that moment Caitlin appeared and caught him by the elbow. “Can I have a word, Daniel?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Daniel.

Allegra smiled at him, and headed to the other end of the bar, where Harry was ready for another one.

Caitlin’s mascara had run, but she always got teary at farewells. “It’s about Benyon’s present. Did you put in?”

“I didn’t see an envelope before we left,” Daniel said, casting his mind back. 

Caitlin nodded. “I put in for both of you just in case. Twenty each.”  

“Okay,” said Daniel, reaching in his pocket for his wallet. He opened it up. “Shit. I haven’t been home yet. Sorry, Caitlin, can I fix you up Monday?”

She nodded.

“What did we get him?” Daniel asked curiously.

“A watch,” said Caitlin. “Finch hasn’t given it to him yet. I have to get you and Harry to sign the card first.”

“Sure,” said Daniel, and watched while Caitlin searched for the card in her bag.

Daniel scanned it quickly to see what everyone else had written. _Good luck, You’ll be missed,_ and other variations on the tired theme. Daniel took the pen that Caitlin offered him, and thought for a moment.

“Hurry up,” Caitlin urged, looking around to make sure Benyon wasn’t watching.

“I’m thinking,” Daniel said. He settled at last on _Tom, Best wishes, Daniel._

“Thanks, Daniel,” said Caitlin, slipping the card back into her bag and looking around for Harry. She tucked escaping strands of her straw-coloured hair behind her ears. “You know he starts chemo next week?”

“I heard,” said Daniel.

Caitlin looked like she was about to start crying again, so Daniel excused himself. Leaving his drink on the bar, he looked for the toilets.

He found them out the back. _Ladies, Gents_ , and a door at the end that had a _Staff Only_ sign taped to it. Daniel wondered if that’s where Allegra had put her bag: a purple and green woven tote that he’d seen her carry on the train, stretched out of shape with use and frayed at the seams. If she’d been carrying that bag when he’d seen her first in the bar he would have placed her immediately as the dark-haired girl from the 11.27 from Central. Out of context it had taken longer.

Daniel pushed open the door to the bathroom, and it squealed.   

Standing at the trough with one hand on the tiled wall, Daniel closed his eyes briefly. He was tired still, and not exactly sober, and he tried to think of something to say to Allegra when he went to the bar next.

He heard the door squeal again.

Traveller Finch met him at the washbasins. He was straightening his tie in the mirror. “Daniel,” he said, looking across at him. “How did it go in Auxiliary?”

“It went well,” said Daniel, washing his hands. “I’ll file the report on Monday morning.”

“First thing, if you don’t mind,” said Finch. “Did you sign Tom’s card?”

“Yes,” said Daniel. “But I don’t know if Caitlin’s caught up with Harry yet or not.”

Traveller Finch withdrew a small box from his pocket, and opened it to reveal a silver watch. “What do you think?”

Daniel looked at the watch gleaming under the yellow bathroom lights. “It’s nice.”

Finch snapped the box shut and slipped it into his pocket. “Yes,” he said meditatively as he adjusted his tie again. “Not much for eighteen years though, is it?”

“No,” Daniel agreed, and escaped again outside.

He collected his bottle from the end of the bar, and found Harry by the jukebox still, talking about retirement still. “If I quit now,” said Harry, “I’d have enough to get by until my pension kicks in.”

“Maybe,” Ruth told him, keeping an eye on Max as he sat on the floor, “but you’d go stir-crazy if you retired, Harry. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself, admit it!”

Harry growled, which was as close as he ever came to an admission of any kind.

“Did Caitlin catch up with you?” Daniel asked him.

“Yeah,” said Harry, and saw the bottle of water that Daniel was holding. “What the hell are _you_ drinking?”

“It’s water, Harry,” said Daniel. “You should try it and give your liver a break.”

“It’s taken me years to train this liver,” Harry told him. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let it slack off now.”

And he laughed so hard that Max looked up from his colouring book and crayons.

Ruth rolled her eyes.

“Well, I’m staying on water for the rest of the night,” Daniel said.

“I’m not,” said Harry. 

And three hours later, having switched from beer to vodka, Harry Dean was giving Daniel advice. “If you like her,” he said, nodding towards the bar, “just go and _ask_ her.”

“Ask her what?” Daniel said, glad that nobody else could hear them over the jukebox.

“For a date, for a feel, for a fuck, _Jesus,_ Daniel,” Harry slurred.

“I’m not you, Harry,” said Daniel.

“Good for you, Daniel,” Ruth told him staunchly.

But he knew he had to ask her _something_ before the bar closed.

“So, Daniel?” Harry asked later still, struggling with his jacket. “Are you comin’ to the clubs?”

Daniel glanced across to where Allegra was wiping down the bar.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”

“See you tomorrow,” Ruth said. She was carrying Max. His head was resting on her shoulder, and he was asleep.

“See you,” Daniel said, holding the door for Ruth.

 Then he looked across at the bar again, and this time Allegra looked back at him expectantly like she was waiting for him to ask her something, and he didn’t yet know what that was.

Daniel wasn’t used to being nervous, but with Allegra he felt like a teenager all over again, or at least how he imagined a teenager would feel. He had never been awkward around girls before, not even at thirteen when he’d first noticed they had hips and breasts. He remembered the first time he’d slept with a girl. He’d been fifteen, and the experience had been less humiliating than he’d anticipated. Since then he’d improved his technique, but all of his relationships had been brief, even casual. Sex until that time had meant nothing more to Daniel Marsden than the commission of a biological function, one step beyond solitary masturbation. He felt no emotional connection with his partners, and didn’t fool himself into thinking they felt anything either. Every Friday night the bars near the Consulate were filled with men and women just like Daniel Marsden; young enough, attractive enough, and drunk enough. Daniel had seen the inside of dozens of different tiny bedrooms in his time. He wasn’t proud of it, and he was a little tired of it.

 _Fuck or fight Friday,_ Harry Dean called it. 

Now, almost twenty years old, Daniel wanted something else. He didn’t want to end up like Harry, meeting divorcees who trawled the bars in packs, and buying them drinks and listening to stories about their ex-husbands. He wanted what Ruth had instead. He wanted someone to go home to. He wanted someone to talk to over dinner. He wanted kids, with their sniffles and bugs. He wanted his priorities to shift to something apart from paperwork and reports and overtime claim forms.

He saw men older than him still living for the glory of the weekend. He didn’t want to wake up with a hangover on a Monday morning. He wanted something more in his life than that.

He wanted Allegra. He wanted her now, with her smile and her dark hair. He wanted her when she was sick, when she was cranky, when she was old, and he wanted her every moment in between.

He crossed over to the bar again. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she smiled.

“Do you want to, um, get a drink or something when you’re finished work?” he asked, wishing that he didn’t look like a kid with his baby-face and his baggy suit.

“Everything’s closed except the clubs,” said Allegra. “I don’t really like clubs.”

“Oh, okay,” said Daniel, and wondered how he’d managed to misread every smile she’d given him throughout the night.  

“I wouldn’t mind a coffee though,” she said, just as he was ready to turn around. “As long as you don’t mind waiting while I finish up here.”

He smiled. “I don’t mind.” 

Daniel worried that she didn’t want the same things. He worried that she was the same as all those other Friday night girls, but at a quarter past one when they were on the train heading back to his place she leaned over towards him and said, “I don’t usually do this.”

On the train they talked about work. Daniel had a Consulate job, Allegra aspired to one. She asked about selection criteria and interviews, but all that time they held hands and Daniel had never felt so comfortable with anyone. For the first time it didn’t feel like he was playing a game, putting on a front until he got her back to his place. 

 It could have been a mistake. He’d known that when he’d taken her home. He knew not to trust his mind when he had been too long without sleep, to say nothing of all the beer he’d drunk at the farewell.

He woke up the next morning before the alarm.

He lay in bed, savouring that moment between sleep and waking when his body was awake but his mind still drifted.  He saw the pattern of the light on the sheets, and it caught in his eyelashes and illuminated the world. The air was cool on his skin. He lay there, still an empty vessel, but then he felt the warmth of her body lying next to him, and he turned his head and saw her face, and he remembered and smiled.

Daniel Marsden was not given to poetry, but he looked at the way her dark eyelashes rested on her cheeks, and the way the night had twisted her dark hair into elflocks, and he wished he was. He half-closed his eyes again, to drowse in the illuminated world.

It hadn’t been a mistake after all. Allegra was still wonderful and beautiful, and she was still the girl that he was going to marry one day.

He didn’t tell her this, not yet, but six weeks after he’d met her at Benyon’s farewell, Allegra moved out of her parents’ place in the Commission and into Daniel’s flat.

Daniel had never been happier.

He didn’t know at that at that time that he only had eight months, two weeks, three days and six hours until Davey Macquarie would end his life with four small words: _Fuck it. Kill Marsden._  

 

 

 

 

Wednesday

 

 

Early morning, and Daniel stopped in at the shop across from the transportation hub. He was running earlier than the morning rush of commuters, and didn’t have to wait long to be served. He slipped his headphones off.

“Just a packet of gum, thanks,” Daniel said, scanning the display case, “and a chocolate bar.”

He saw that someone had vandalised the shopfront overnight. A window had been cracked, and spray painted over in fluorescent orange: _The Navigator is dead_. And beneath it: _The Navigator is a tyrant._

The vendor saw him reading it, and shrugged. “Can’t be both,” he said, and slid the chocolate over the counter. “Two-eighty.”

Daniel paid with his card, and decided to call that breakfast. He’d finished the chocolate bar before he even made it through the entrance of the transportation hub.

He swiped his ID card against the scanner at the barrier, and pushed through the gates. From the top of the stairs he could hear the squeal of the train as it approached. Daniel took the stairs two at a time, and dashed across the platform into the last carriage just as the doors began to close.

Breathless, he leaned against the wall of the carriage, and turned up his music.

He read the map on the wall while the train picked up speed again. The lights flickered on and off intermittently. Three stops until Central, and Daniel knew every bend and dip along the route. He sighed, and wished he was still in bed with Allegra. There had been a time when it seemed like all they’d done was lie in bed all day, only venturing out for food or the toilet. Now, Daniel couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day off.

He was tired.

The train slowed, turned, and the track rose slowly out of the Commission. 

Daniel changed trains at Central, and leaned against the wall of the carriage.

 _Next stop Consulate,_ the tannoy said. _Next stop Consulate._

Daniel turned up his music player. He thought the rhythm of the carriage as it rocked gently on the rails would send him to sleep if he let it. 

At the station he bought a coffee from the small booth that seemed to always have a queue of public servants three or four deep at the counter, whatever the time of day.

There was a newsstand next to the coffee booth, and Daniel’s eye was caught by the colourful rack of cards by the counter.

 Daniel stood at the rack outside the newsstand. It squealed as he turned it. A picture caught his eye, and he withdrew the card. _Happy Valentine’s Day,_ it said. _Wishing you the best wishes._ Daniel made a face and put it back.

He looked at the man behind the newsstand counter. He eyed Daniel suspiciously, as though he thought a young man dressed in a grey business suit and tie might suddenly make a run for it with a cheap birthday card.

 _I didn’t know what to get you for Valentine’s Day,_ said the next card. On the inside it said: _So I got you me!_ Daniel put it back as well.

“Morning,” said a voice behind him, and Daniel turned to see Ruth standing behind him. It wasn’t even eight o’clock and Ruth already looked harried. Daniel could see she had pulled her hair back without brushing it, she wasn’t wearing make-up, and there was a grubby mark on her shirt collar that looked like jam.

“Morning, Ruth,” he said. “How’s Max?”

Ruth caught his gaze, and looked at her collar. “Shit,” she said, and produced a wipe from her pocket. She scrubbed at her collar for a moment. “Buying a card?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Daniel. For a moment they were jostled by the crowd off the 7.35 coming up the stairs from the station and heading for the Consulate. “For Allegra. How come there aren’t any that say: _Happy Valentine’s Day, even though we’ve only been going out for five months I think you’re just about perfect, and by the way I’m sorry for being such an inattentive prick_?”

Ruth raised her eyebrows at him. “Valentine’s cards don’t cater for complexity.”

“I’m not complex,” Daniel said, selecting another card from the squeaking rack. “I just can’t, well, you know.”

“The old death knell,” Ruth said, and looked at her watch. “Did you get called in too?”

Daniel put the card back. “Yeah. I wonder what today’s crisis is.”

They climbed the wide public stairs up towards the Consulate. By the time Daniel reached the security checkpoint he’d scalded his mouth with his first sip of the coffee and felt more alert. He hooked his lanyard out from underneath his collar and held out his card.

“Back again already?” asked the same guard who’d been on duty when he left. “They’re working you lot like dogs.”

Daniel showed his ID card to the flickering scanner, and smiled wryly. “No rest for the wicked.”

The guard laughed. It was hard to feel too sympathetic for taxation investigators, after all.

Daniel and Ruth entered the Consulate. There had been a time when Daniel had been awed by it, but not today. The vaulted ceilings, wide walkways, ministerial offices and halls of power, all filled with the hum of government, hardly even registered. He had walked through them too often to care anymore about their self-importance. He knew that the real work of the Consulate took place in the back rooms and tiny offices crammed with paperwork and public servants, and that the governments came and went while the Navigator remained. 

Daniel scanned his ID card again when he reached the office, and pushed the door open. He held it open for Ruth.

Caitlin was waiting in the foyer for them. Her hair was messy and there were bags under her eyes. “Guys,” she said, “I’m so sorry. Terry’s off sick, and the power’s gone out on the Yellow line, so half the staff is running late. I’ve got four newbies waiting for someone to train them in intel submissions, Finch wants someone to go with him to the ministerial briefing, the comms centre is being refitted so all their calls are diverting to the floor, and I’ve been here since yesterday afternoon!”

Daniel sighed.

“Okay, Caitlin,” he said. “Where do you want us?”

They moved towards the heavy interior door. Ruth leaned against it and held it open for Daniel. Caitlin followed them through.

The office was already busy. Aaron, his desk closest to the door, looked up at they entered and nodded at them in greeting. All around him, at unmanned desks, phones were ringing out.

Caitlin was harried. “I just need someone to go with Finch, and someone to do the training, and anybody who’s left over can answer the phones.”

“Maybe we should put the newbies on the phones,” Ruth suggested.

“I already asked Finch,” Caitlin scowled. “He said they aren’t qualified.”

Daniel looked around the floor. He saw faces he knew from comms walking around the desks, picking up what phones they could.

“Jesus,” he said. “Can we at least not divert all the calls to a dedicated line?”

“The techs tried that,” Caitlin said, “and we lost all the phones for an hour.” She narrowed her eyes. “It has been a _long_ night, Daniel.”

“That’s what I love about this place,” Daniel told her. “It’s never boring.”

Caitlin rolled her eyes at him, and leaned over the pick up the nearest phone. “Comms. Good morning.”

“Is Harry in?” Daniel asked.

 _Meal room,_ she mouthed, rummaging through the desk drawers for a notebook. “Yes, sir. What is your authorisation number? Can you repeat that?”

Daniel put his coffee on his desk and turned to Ruth. He dug around in his pocket for a coin. “I’ll toss you for it.”

“Tails, I get to pick,” Ruth said.

Daniel flicked the coin and caught it again. He made a face. “Tails.”

Ruth smiled at him brightly. “Enjoy your training!”

Daniel sighed, and dumped his bag on his desk. He saw a few unfamiliar faces watching him from where they’d gathered under the stairs.

“Look at them,” said Harry Dean, appearing out of nowhere. “More fucking college graduates, come to tell us how to do our job.”

“You take things too personally,” Daniel told him, looking at him over his gridscreen. “They’re not here to force you into retirement, Harry.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’re still a kid,” Harry told him.

“And you’re a decrepit old man, are you?” Daniel asked.

Harry smiled. “Maybe.”

He disappeared again.

Daniel saw that the new faces were still watching him.

“Okay, newbies,” he announced. “First things first. Whoever brings me a blueberry muffin from the cafeteria probably won’t fail.”

He laughed as his words sent them scurrying.

It would be a long day, but Daniel liked the chaos. Say what you wanted about his job, it was never as boring as people assumed.

In three months, one week, four days and thirteen hours he would be dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday

 

 

 Lying in bed one day, after working through until four in the morning, Daniel found that he was tired and wrung out and he just couldn’t sleep.

He stretched, and closed his eyes, and wondered if he needed a break from work.

It was a redundant question, of course. He desperately needed a break, but he wouldn’t get one. There was too much work and too few staff, and everyone’s leave had been cancelled.

He slept at last, fitfully, until his phone work him. He rolled over to look at the clock even while he flipped it open. It was nine.

“Marsden,” he yawned into the phone.

“Daniel, it’s Caitlin.” She sounded as tired as he did. “Can you come in?”

“Yeah,” he said. “See you soon.”

He flipped the phone shut and resisted the urge to close his eyes.

“Who was that?” Allegra asked, her voice muffled by the pillow.

“I have to go to work,” he told her.

She kept her body turned away from his, and he wondered if she had fallen asleep again before he saw that all the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tensed.

“Sorry,” he said. He hauled himself out of bed clumsily, steadying himself as he swayed. He felt drunk.

He yawned again to clear his head, and shuffled towards the bathroom.

The cold shower brought him around again, and stung his aching eyes.

When he came back into the bedroom and began to dress, he looked at Allegra and wondered if he still knew what they were to each other.

It had begun to disintegrate, their relationship, Daniel knew. It was nobody’s fault, which made it worse. It was late nights, early mornings, and nothing more than a few words exchanged in passing. They slept in the same bed, but hardly ever at the same time. Allegra was usually asleep by the time Daniel made it home, undressing quietly in the darkness so as not to wake her. And most mornings he was gone again by the time she woke up. He couldn’t remember the last time they ate a meal together.

He didn’t know what she did with her days.

Daniel made promises to the relationship that all began the same way: _In a few months. When this is finished. By Christmas. As soon as it’s over._

He promised them a fresh start, except it never came. He spent too long at work, sometimes catching a few hours on a camp bed in the supply room when Allegra was at college or working, just to save himself the commute. He kept a toothbrush and razor in his desk drawer.

They both still tried, but it took its toll. They were like a tired married couple who occupied the same space but no longer spoke. Sometimes Daniel stepped into the shower and his fingers traced through the droplets Allegra had left on the screen, and he felt that she was as transient as a ghost. She left traces; lunches and dinners in labelled containers in the fridge, an ironed shirt hanging on the back of the bedroom door, a note on the kitchen bench: _When will I see you? A_ , and he knew he had become a ghost to her as well.

He wondered if he had relied too much on her patience. She couldn’t wait forever.

He knew that. He left her too many messages during the day, and they had started to sound more and more like hollow excuses.

_It’s Daniel. Something’s come up. I have to put in an all-nighter._

_It’s Daniel. Sorry, but I won’t be home for dinner._

_It’s Daniel. I won’t be finished until midnight, and I’m due to start again at six so I’m going to crash here. I’ll see you tomorrow night._

The gifts he brought her began to pile up in the apartment, and he couldn’t tell by their placement if she liked them or not, or if they only served now as tiny monuments to the distance between them. Books, jewellery, chocolates and real flowers; empty gestures that cost a fortune.   

They rarely saw one another. Those moments were small and precious, they both knew it, but they began to fight and ruin them. 

 “I’m going,” said Daniel that morning, buttoning up his shirt.

“Fine,” said Allegra. “Whatever.”

She was lying in bed, the comforter pulled up, and he was talking to her naked shoulder and the tangled fall of her hair. He could see the side of her pale neck, and her clenched jaw.

Daniel turned back to the cupboard for a moment, found the track pants he was looking for, and shoved them in the top of his gym bag. He zipped the bag closed, and regarded her again. “Look,” he told her hair, her neck, her jaw, “this is bullshit. I’m _working,_ you know that.” 

“Fine,” said Allegra, but her voice wavered, and Daniel knew the pattern well enough by now to expect either tears or a bollocking. She rounded on him suddenly, sitting upright and drawing the sheet up to her chin even though it was too late for modesty. “You work _all_ the time, Daniel, and I try to be patient, but this is my birthday!”

“I know,” he said, and sighed. He showed her the palms of his hands. “Look, I didn’t ask to be called in, but that’s how it is, and I’m _sorry_ , but I have to work!”

“All my friends are coming,” she said, and then she started to cry, and bowed her head, and hid her face behind her hair.

Daniel sat on the bed beside her, and reached out to touch her shoulder.

She shook his hand off. “Go away,” she sniffed.

Daniel didn’t move. He wanted to look at his watch, but knew that she’d spot that and it would be on again for young and old. He freed her arm from the sheet, and twined his fingers through hers, and closed his eyes, and made those silent empty promises again:

_In a few months. When this is finished. By Christmas. As soon as it’s over._

“I love you,” he told her hair and the back of the neck. “I do, and I’m sorry that I have to work so much.”

She leaned back towards him, letting her skin brush against his shirt and allowing his arms to encircle her, and Daniel knew he had averted the crisis for just a little longer. He also knew that it was inevitable. She couldn’t wait forever, and he couldn’t ask her to.

“I love you too,” she said.

“Happy birthday,” he said, and kissed her as he left the bedroom.

Outside he straightened his tie, and shrugged his grey suit jacket on. He picked a piece of fluff from the lapel, and left the jacket unbuttoned. He crossed to the kitchen bench to collect his phone and his wallet, and his Consulate ID.  He slipped the blue lanyard over his desk, and checked the laminated card: _Daniel Marsden, Taxation Investigator, Consulate._

He found his keys beside the gridscreen in the lounge where he’d thrown them the night before. Behind him in the bedroom he heard bare feet shuffling on the floor, and then the squeak of the bathroom door. She would head back to bed again in a few minutes, he knew. He thought of her settling back down underneath the doona for more sleep, and wished he could stay. He had found time for her, somehow, in those first few weeks. Why couldn’t he now?

_In a few months. When this is finished. By Christmas. As soon as it’s over._

He needed more time.

He had two months, three weeks, two days and six hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday

 

“Daniel? Daniel?”

He woke up slick with sweat, his heart thumping, and for a moment he was an empty vessel. For a fraction of a second he didn’t know where he was and what was happening, and he was afraid. He sat bolt upright in the darkness.

“Daniel,” Allegra whispered to him, touching him on the arm. “You’re having a bad dream.”

It fell into place, and he exhaled heavily. “Okay.”

He could hear the gentle hiss of the air-conditioning, the creak of the mattress, Allegra’s breath. The room was illuminated dimly by the green clock display: 3:54.

“Sorry,” he said at last. “Did I wake you up?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, drawing him back down onto the mattress. “Do you remember what it was about?”

“What?” he asked wearily.

“The dream,” she said, resting her hand on his chest. “God, Daniel, your heart’s still racing!”

Daniel laid his hand over hers. “I don’t remember.”

He stared up towards the ceiling and thought he saw strange shapes moving there, like nebulous pools of oil in the darkness. He blinked his eyes.

“You’re very hot,” Allegra told him. “You might be coming down with something. You should go to the doctor.”

“I’m fine,” he said, turning his head to catch the scent of her hair. “I haven’t got time to see the doctor.”

“I know,” she said, and let the old argument go unsaid, all those things they’d covered a hundred times before in the light of day: work and priorities and time. 

Daniel had two months, six days, and fourteen hours left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday

 

 

Daniel discovered that he had started to envy the people that left the Consulate at five p.m. sharp every afternoon. He never had before. Sometimes he had watched the mass exodus down the stairs, across the street and into the station and smiled at the thought of them packing into the 5.10 train; managers, secretaries, ministers, clerks, administration officers, heads of departments and canteen workers, all crammed in together where none of the divisions they’d observed so carefully for the last eight hours mattered at all. Now he wished that he was one of them, getting whisked off home to all corners of the world in time for dinner.

He used to like working odd shifts, but that was before Allegra.

It was the nightshifts that Daniel had started to hate the most. There had been a time that he had enjoyed the quiet and the solitude of the office at night, the satisfaction of keeping the wheels turning while most of the world slept, but back then he slept as long as he needed during the day and had no outside considerations to intrude on him. Colleagues with kids and partners hated working nights. Daniel felt like he’d crossed to their team now, and the singles and the divorcees who could put their lives on hold for a week or two of night shifts didn’t understand. He still liked the quiet and the solitude when he could clean up his workload with no meetings and messages and administrative requirements to slow his progress, but now he was tired.

 Yawning, he flicked on his gridscreen, and went through his messages. It would kill an hour. Transfers and babies and promotions and _Please don’t leave the kitchen in such a mess!!!!_ He left the official messages for last: policy tweaks and changes to legislation, budgetary cuts that might filter down his way, and the latest broadcast from the Navigator’s Office that he’d missed.

 A message from the HRO: _Traveller Marsden, your medical is due. Any failure to attend before March 12 will result in the loss of three pay points and your status will be reviewed._

He was already two days overdue. It was typical of Human Resources that they never checked whether or not their staff members were available before they sent out their ultimatums. Caitlin had once come back from her annual leave to find she’d lost pay points.

Daniel fired back a response: _Traveller, had you checked with Tr Finch you would have been advised that I have been on a three week audit of Auxiliary, and therefore unable to attend the Consulate Medical Office. I will make an appointment as soon as practicable. Please direct any further enquiries in this matter to Tr Finch. Tr Daniel Marsden._    

Daniel sat back and smiled. A dispute with the HRO? Definitely a homecoming.

At two a.m. he lagged, and shuffled across the floor towards the kitchenette.

It had been several days since Daniel had last seen inside the office, and it had felt like a homecoming in a way. He was always glad to see the familiar pattern of the desks stretching out across the main floor, the faded blue carpet and the collection of mismatched coffee mugs in the kitchenette. It was the coffee mugs that had reminded him how long he’d been gone; his had worked its way right to the back of the shelf, behind Ruth’s with the cats, John’s _#1 Dad_ , Bernard’s with his kids’ photo on it, and Caitlin’s _Is it Friday Yet?_

Daniel’s coffee mug was cornflower blue. It had a picture of a cow on it. He’d bought it on his first day in the office, from the minimart in the terminal where all the Consulate staff picked up their cigarettes and newspapers on their way to work.

He filled his cup from the gurgling urn and headed back to his desk.

The quiet nights were the worst. He finished his paperwork and his first coffee by midnight, and then had eight hours to kill until the morning shift arrived in their newly ironed shirts, smelling of their morning bathroom rituals of perfume, aftershave or antiperspirant.

On busy nights he made it through on caffeine and adrenaline.Tonight was not one of the busy nights, and it stretched out interminably.  

“Are you okay?” Harry asked him later as they went through the daily log messages together.

“Yeah,” said Daniel, distracted. “Why?”

“Because you’ve put two different ratings on this one,” said Harry, tapping the desk with the chewed end of his pen.

“Shit, sorry,” said Daniel, reaching for the printout. He peered at it again through his glasses and corrected it.

“So what’s up?” Harry pressed.

“No, I’m just tired,” Daniel said, rolling his shoulders.

Night shift was two of them only, and Comms.  Comms worked independently of the floor, doors closed, and it was like they weren’t even there. Night shift was skeleton staff on the floor, and when Daniel worked it was always with Harry Dean.

“Wuss,” said Harry now. “How are your audits going anyway?”

Harry began to look through the stack of folders on Daniel’s desk. He opened one: Tr Lara Banks. 

“No photograph?” he asked.

Daniel glanced at the folder. “It’s on the board. Look at this though. She’s an admin officer, and last month she had two separate deposits of five thousand in her account, both drawn out the same day as they were deposited. That’s a lot of extra cash for someone on a secretarial wage to be drawing.”

“Where does she work?” Harry asked.

“In a rations depot in the Crewman Quarter,” Daniel said.

Harry shrugged. “That’s a job very open to offers of corruption.”

“Sure,” said Daniel, covering a yawn with his hand. “But ten thousand? The sort of people who want extra ration cards aren’t exactly able to cough up that kind of money.”

“Who deposited the money?” Harry asked.  

Daniel showed him a copy of the deposit forms. “Both times paid in cash, and the signature’s undecipherable. Both were paid in at the same branch in Production.”

Harry looked at the forms.

“Here’s our guy,” said Daniel. He slid over two grainy surveillance photographs. “Those were the clearest shots, if you can believe it. He kept his head down the whole time, and kept that beanie on. There’s nothing useful. I mean, it might not even be the same guy.”

“If we don’t know where the money comes from, do we know where it goes?” Harry asked.  

“No. Cash withdrawals from her local branch.” This time the photographs showed Lara Banks withdrawing the money from her account.

“It seems risky,” Harry said. “Why would they use the bank to send money to one another? And why use a personal account? Shit, even an idiot would have to know that amount of cash in a single transaction would get flagged.”  

Daniel shrugged. “They’re either total amateurs or they think the Consulate can’t touch them.” He sighed and closed the folder. “I’m too tired for this.”

“Well, I’ll see you your rations depot secretary, and I’ll raise you this,” said Harry. He reached across to his own desk for a folder, and slapped it down on Daniel’s desk.

Daniel opened up the folder to read the name on the inside cover: Tr. Colin Roberts.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you serious?”

“Turn the page,” said Harry.

Daniel sighed and flicked the page over to another profile: Tr. David Macquarie.

Harry took a careless slurp of his coffee. “Finch asked me to dig them out of the filing cabinet this afternoon.”

“Great,” said Daniel, shaking his head. He pushed his chair back from his desk. “I’m going for a break.”

He felt that if he didn’t get up and move he’d fall asleep. He crossed over to the board and looked at for a while, stooping to pick up a thumbtack that had dropped onto the thin carpet. He pushed it back into the board and yawned.

When he got back to his desk Harry had disappeared. Daniel drew a deep breath and returned to his work.

“I’m bored,” Harry announced that night at three a.m.

“Don’t say that,” Daniel told him. “You’ll jinx it.”

Just after four Daniel fell asleep, his arms crossed on his desk and his head resting on them.

Daniel slept, and as he slept he dreamed of Allegra; her touch, her smile and the fall of her hair. In the dream her voice was music. He heard the lift and the fall, and glimpsed the spaces behind them that were filled with colours.

Work and folders and figures slipped away into nothing.

The night melted around him, and he dreamed that he would spend the rest of his life with Allegra. The rest of his life was seven weeks, six days and two hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday

 

 

The key jammed in the lock, so it wasn’t exactly the grand gesture he’d hoped for, but as soon as they were inside Allegra put her hands over her mouth and just _squealed._ Daniel couldn’t stop laughing at the look on her face.

“Oh, my god!” she exclaimed, running her hands over the upholstery on the couch and opening and closing the kitchen cupboards. “Oh, my god! Is it _ours_?”

“Do you like it?” Daniel asked, still laughing. 

 _“Oh,”_ Allegra said, twisting the taps in the sink so that the water splattered everywhere. “Is it _two_ bedrooms?”

“Do you like it?” Daniel asked again.

“It’s _wonderful!_ ” Allegra exclaimed. “Is it really ours?”

“It’s the benefit of having a Consulate job,” Daniel told her. “First look at the new requisitions.”

They had the housewarming that night, and everybody came. Allegra’s friends and workmates, and Daniel’s, and soon the new flat was full of people, and the kitchen bench was covered in empty bottles and glasses.

 _Two bedrooms!_ her envious friends teased Allegra. _When’s the next big announcement?_

And she laughed at them, and screwed up her nose and told them to piss off, but Daniel saw the secret glance she cast at him and he smiled.

At some point in the night Daniel found himself standing on his back balcony –  _A balcony!_ Allegra had exclaimed – looking down into the quiet, empty street with Ruth and Harry on either side of him.

“Did you hear about Benyon?” Ruth asked them.

“Fuck,” said Harry Dean, leaning on the railing on the balcony. “Poor Benyon. That’s no way to go is it?”

Ruth nodded, sipping her wine.

“Fuck that,” said Harry, and pressed a drink into Daniel’s hands. “They said it went into remission, you know, but once cancer’s got you it’ll always come back.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Daniel, looking inside to where Allegra and some of her friends from college were dancing in the lounge room.  The bourbon burned his throat.

“Look at Benyon,” said Harry. “The leukemia goes into remission, and then two months later he’s got bowel cancer. You reckon that’s a coincidence?”

“Yeah, what can you do,” Daniel said meditatively.

Ruth nodded again. “Journeymen’s Disease.”

Daniel shrugged. “Everything these days causes cancer, if you believe it. There was an article on the grid last week that said the burnt bits on toast are carcinogenic.”

Harry laughed shortly. “They’ll tell us not to breathe next.”

“Well, you shouldn’t smoke,” Ruth said, and looked at Harry pointedly.

“It’s the least of my sins,” Harry said, and as though she’d reminded him he took a cigarette from his packet and lit it. “Daniel?”

Daniel held up his hand. “I don’t smoke, thanks.”

“That’s right,” said Harry, and shook his head. “Of course you don’t.”

They stood for a moment in silence.

Ruth laughed at last. “Listen to us! It’s a celebration, right? Daniel, it’s a great flat! Cheers!”

She held up her glass and Daniel tapped it with the side of his beer bottle.

Their first few weeks in the new flat in Production were like their first few weeks together. It didn’t matter that he was so neat and that she left her clothes on the floor. She laughed at him because he folded his clothes as he put them in the washing basket.

“It makes it easier at the laundromat,” he told her, and flushed because she was still laughing. “You don’t have to sort them!”

Allegra was lying on the bed in the tangle of sheets that she could sleep in without straightening. He loved the look on her face when she laughed. He liked how she laughed so loudly that he could see her back teeth, and the way she threw her head back and hugged her ribs. Her whole body went with her when she laughed.

“Oh, Daniel!” she managed at last, wiping the tears from her face. “ _This_ is how you get undressed!”

She pulled her shirt off over her head, balled it up and threw it on the floor.

“How can we live together if you fold your dirty clothes?”

She was sitting on the bed now, wearing her pyjama pants and a thin singlet.

“I’ll do all the washing,” he offered, smiling at the sight of her.

She held out her arms and he joined her on the bed.

“I don’t know,” she whispered teasingly in his ear while they both struggled with her singlet. “Can you really just ignore that shirt there on the floor?”

“Hell, yes,” he said.

She laughed again, and pushed him back onto the bed.

In the weeks that followed Daniel wondered if it was because they didn’t have sex as often that they started to notice those little things again. They were still happy. They didn’t have sex as much, but that was only normal. Daniel knew that. They both worked, they were both tired, and it wasn’t the end of the world if they fell asleep without it.

Sometimes, when she was at work or at school and when he was home, he liked to count the number of things that were out of place in the flat: clothes on the floor, dishes in the sink, the remote control on the kitchen bench, the shower door left open, books put back on the shelf upside-down. They reminded him that Allegra was in his life.

Sometimes he leaned in the doorway of the empty second bedroom, looking at the boxes of Allegra’s stuff she hadn’t unpacked yet and picturing what this room might one day hold. There was a hook in the ceiling left by the last tenants, and Daniel imagined a mobile hanging there above a cot and animal decals on the wall. These were the things he wanted, the simplest things in the world, and he owed it to himself, and to Allegra and her secret glance, to make them happen. 

The new flat had given their relationship new life and this time, Daniel told himself, he wasn’t going to let work get in the way. He would make time.

He didn’t know he only had two weeks, one day and fifteen hours of time left.

 

 

 

 

 

Monday

 

 

“Morning, guys,” said Daniel, weaving through the serried rows of desks in the main office. He dropped his gym bag on the floor and kicked it under his chair. “Where’s Harry?”

“Showers, I think,” Caitlin told him, looking up from her desk.

Daniel put his coffee on his desk. “I’ll go and change.”

He rolled his shoulders as he walked, trying to loosen them up. He walked down the hallway past Finch’s office, the meal room, the briefing rooms, the supply rooms that were mostly full of camp beds these days, the stairs that led up to Comms, and finally found himself at the door to the shower room.

“Have you heard?” Daniel asked though the clouds of steam, putting his coffee down on the sink.

“What’s that?” Harry asked, hunting through his locker for his razor. He wasn’t even wearing a towel. Like always he’d left the shower running while he got ready, showing his usual disregard for water rationing, and the place was like a sauna.

“The Consulate’s closing down the Crewman Quarter,” Daniel said. He opened his own locker door with a screech and began to undress.

“Yeah, I heard.” Harry found his razor at last and headed towards the shower. “Where does that leave us?”

“Yeah,” said Daniel, buttoning his coat onto a hanger.

The door squealed open. “Cover it up it it’s not worth looking at, gentlemen!” Ruth stepped inside with one hand in front of her eyes. She was carrying a coffee cup in the other.

Harry stepped sharply into the shower cubicle. “Ruth, my darling, it’s very much worth looking at!”

“You’re okay, Ruth,” Daniel said, shaking his head at Harry.

Ruth lowered her hand. “Sorry, but we don’t have much time,” she said.

Harry crossed his arms on the top of the cubicle door, and rested his chin on them. “This is shit,” he said gruffly.

Daniel nodded.

Ruth raised her eyebrows. “That is _not_ going to go down well with the locals. If the Consulate wants to turn Solomon Day’s grubby little terrorist campaign into a crusade, they’re going the right way about it.”

Daniel sighed. He lifted his lanyard from around his neck and glanced at the ID card attached to it: _Daniel Marsden, Taxation Investigator, Consulate_. He slid it face-down onto the top shelf of his locker.  

“Typical bloody Navigator’s Office,” said Harry Dean, and turned around to face his shower.

“They have to be seen to act,” Daniel reminded him.

The daily broadcasts had been hinting at it for weeks, but Daniel hadn’t guessed until he got the early morning call from Finch: _Daniel? Can you come in? They’re shutting down the Crewman Quarter._

Harry muttered something that was lost under the hiss of the shower.  

“Should we fill in our overtime claims now?” Daniel asked Ruth wryly.

“Be careful,” Ruth said with a smile.

“Always,” Daniel said. He grew serious. “Will you do me a favour, Ruth?”

She looked at him expectantly.

“I’ve got a new mattress being delivered tomorrow, and Allegra’s at college,” he said.

Ruth took out her pen. “What time?” she asked.

“About eleven,” said Daniel, and handed her the keys to his flat.

“No problem,” said Ruth, writing it on her hand.

“You know,” Daniel said meditatively as he reached into his locker for his towel, “I’m getting sick of putting my life on hold for work.”

Ruth smiled. “It must be true love. The Daniel Marsden I knew thought that life _was_ work.”

“Yeah, well let’s just say I’ve reviewed my priorities,” Daniel said, quietly proud of it. He felt as though his vision had never been so clear. “Life is short, apparently.”

In thirteen days and twelve hours life would end for Daniel Marsden.


	12. Chapter 12

After the raid everyone worked late.

The dayroom was filled with the sounds of tapping keys, the whirring of the printer, and the scratch of pens on reports. To being with it was a buzz of activity, but as the night drew on it emptied slowly. Reports were filled out, typed, saved, printed and filed. Prisoners were either interviewed and released, or returned to their cells for court in the morning. Gradually the dayroom emptied. The LEOs’ thoughts turned to bed, or a beer, and Sacha Harper felt more and more frustrated with himself each time somebody called out their goodnights and left. 

Sacha worked his way through his paperwork painstakingly, and Chris Weber, to his credit, didn’t even try and hurry him along even though he’d entered his three arrest reports before Sacha was even half way through his only one. He’d made a mistake tagging the property, and put the wrong code on the report and that had taken ages to sort out.

Chris was sitting beside him at his desk, watching every keystroke.

“No, you’ve linked the property to the place, not the offender,” Chris said, showing him on the gridscreen. “It’s an easy mistake to make.”

Chris Weber was never critical. He was thorough and patient, and a good field training officer. He should have been tearing his hair out, Sacha thought, with all the mistakes he made. _We were all new once,_ he had told him on his first day when he couldn’t even remember the phonetic alphabet.  Nothing ruffled him though, not even tonight.

“But shouldn’t it be linked to the place as well?” Sacha asked. “I mean, we found it in the place.”

“Sure,” said Chris, “but imagine what a mess it would be if you linked every bit of property we’d ever found in Railroad’s straight to Railroad’s. It’d probably crash the grid. What you need to do is link your property to your offender, and then your offender to Railroad’s. That way when you look at Railroad’s you can go straight to the associates tab and see who was arrested and with what, instead of just the what.”

“Oh, okay,” said Sacha, even though he didn’t really understand the difference. Chris promised it would all fall in place eventually though, and as much as he wanted to believe it he worried that Chris was just being charitable.

“You’ll need to go back into the first screen and remove the property from Railroad’s, then start again.” He smiled at Sacha encouragingly. “It’s a shit of a system.”

Sacha worked through it carefully while he watched.

“Okay,” said Chris, “now you need to modify your property class. You’ve put it under Drug.”

“Shouldn’t I?” Sacha asked.

“Not yet,” said Chris. “Because you don’t know for sure what it is and the magistrate would probably throw it out. Put it under Unknown Substance. That sends you a new task to remind you that it needs to be updated. If your offender makes admissions that it’s Agex and you’re prepared to go with that, you can change it to Drug, otherwise you can send it off to get tested.”

“God,” said Sacha. “I wish he’d dumped it now.”

Chris smiled. “You’ll get faster at it. It’ll be second nature in a few months.”

“Really?” Sacha asked without much hope.

“Sure,” said Chris. “Drug arrests are our bread and butter down here. You’ll be doing them in your sleep soon.”

It was eleven p.m. before he was even ready to interview Traveller Macquarie.

He presented his paperwork to Linda, the station officer for the shift.

Linda picked up the key to the cell. “I think the boss wants to sit in on your interview, Sacha,” she said.

“Oh,” said Sacha, surprised. He’d hoped Chris Weber would be beside him, since they’d spent the entire patrol shift yesterday going over interview techniques he might find useful.

He looked at Chris, and he only shrugged.

Sacha followed Linda down the passageway towards the cells.

Linda unlocked the door and slid it open. “David Macquarie,” she said.

She had to call it twice before he looked up.

He looked worse than he had in Railroad’s, Sacha thought, if such a thing was possible. The harsh light of the cell made the shadows under his eyes look black. The rest of his skin was too pale, and dappled here and there with bruises. He had a sore on his bottom lip that had scabbed over and begun to flake. His hair was filthy.

Sacha looked at him and felt itchy. He thought of the cupboard in the shower room at the barracks, stocked with carbolic soap, bottles of antiseptic and lice shampoo.

Macquarie climbed to his feet with difficulty, knocking into the man beside him. The man elbowed him roughly, and he stumbled.

 _“Oi!”_ Linda said, hands on her hips. “Settle down! Macquarie, out here now!”

Macquarie turned. The others pushed him towards the door, and Sacha and Linda caught an arm each. Linda slid the cell door shut again, and locked it. 

Between them, they manoeuvred him down the narrow passageway towards the interview rooms. 

“In you go,” Linda told him, and watched as he shuffled inside and slumped down in the seat.

“Give us a yell if he plays up,” Linda said and headed back to the front desk. 

“Thanks,” said Sacha.

He had never been alone with a prisoner before. He closed the door behind them, and took a seat on the other side of the table. He watched Macquarie warily for a moment, but he wasn’t even sure if he knew where he was. His eyes were fixed on the table, and he swayed slightly in his seat.

Sacha looked at his watch, and checked his notes.

Macquarie exhaled heavily, a long drawn-out sigh that sounded something like regret. Sacha looked at him carefully, but possibly it had been involuntary because he didn’t even raise his eyes.

Sacha twisted the dial on the recorder several times before it began to work, and hit the button to pause it. The equipment was old and temperamental, and nothing like the stuff he had used at the academy. Sacha fought with it every day. 

The door opened and LEO Grantly entered.

“Hello again, son,” he said, and took his seat. 

Sacha looked for a reaction in his prisoner, but Macquarie only closed his eyes briefly. There was a hint of a smile on his face, and he held his head at a slight angle as though he was listening to pleasant music nobody else could hear. Sacha wondered if he was in any condition to be interviewed at all, but nobody had said he wasn’t and Sacha didn’t think he was experienced enough to make the call himself. Sacha was no expert. He hadn’t even seen a junkie before coming to the Crewman Quarter.

Sacha hit the pause button again to begin recording. His chair scraped against the floor as he sat down, and the prisoner opened his eyes again.

Sacha took his pen and placed it above his notebook. He hadn’t done many interviews, and none at all with the boss present, and he was worried he’d make a mistake. He remembered to speak clearly for the recorder:

“This is an interview with David Macquarie. Traveller Macquarie, please view the footage that was taken earlier this evening in Railroad’s. It is exhibit—”

He felt stupid then because he had to check his notebook, and it wasn’t like he had a whole catalogue of exhibits, only two, but it was better to check first than to make a mistake. Chris Weber always reminded him of that when he saw that he was beginning to lose his confidence.

“Exhibit Two-A.”

Sacha watched Macquarie’s face while he watched the gridscreen. He seemed disinterested, listless, and Sacha wondered if he was still high. It had been hours though, so perhaps he was just beyond caring.

He worried that he didn’t know anything about Agex, apart from its being the drug of choice in the Crewman Quarter. Sacha had done all the standard workbooks at the Academy, and couldn’t remember now the difference between barbiturates and opiates, or even if there was any difference at all. Every junkie in the world was an authority, a de-facto chemist, and Sacha didn’t even know what was in painkillers. It was another one of those things that Chris Weber promised would come in time. One day he would be able to identify a drug just by the faint chemical smell of it, and by the symptoms of its user.

Macquarie watched the screen. From where he was sitting Sacha could see the images flickering in his green eyes, but his face didn’t register anything at all. He seemed an empty vessel.

Sacha waited until the footage ended and then turned it off. He almost hit the pause button on the recorder by mistake but caught himself in time.

“Traveller Macquarie, do you dispute the footage?” he asked him.

“Nope,” said Macquarie.

Sacha hadn’t expected that. He’d expected the usual litany of excuses: _It’s not mine. I was holding it for someone else. Someone must have put it in my pocket when I wasn’t looking. The footage is wrong. You planted it. You’re framing me._

“Traveller Macquarie, is there anything you would like to say for the recording?”

“Nope,” said Macquarie.

“Traveller, you will not be given another opportunity to present any extenuating circumstances,” he told him.  

“Sure,” he mumbled, and Sacha wondered again if he really understood what was happening at all.

Sacha consulted his notebook again. Exhibit Two-B. He’d written _Agex_ down at first, but crossed it out again when Chris had pointed out the error. He’d replaced it with: _Unknown Substance._

Sacha needed an admission that the substance found on him was Agex, to save sending it away for testing. He didn’t really expect one, and he hadn’t done enough interviews to feel like he could talk him around the issue until he incriminated himself. Although, he reasoned, Macquarie had been compliant so far, in his weary, apathetic way. If he didn’t understand the significance of the question, he might get lucky.

He chanced it. “Traveller Macquarie, the drug found in your possession is Agex. Is that correct?”

Macquarie showed him a quick smile. “I hope so. That’s what I paid for.”

Sacha was surprised. He’d been ready to explain the testing process to him, and how he was going to charge him with the possession of a suspected illegal substance and amend the charges when the lab results came back. He’d been ready to remind him that he might not get bail, and might be stuck in detention until the results came back, and sometimes it took weeks. He’d been ready to explain how the magistrate might take into account an early admission and sentence him accordingly. He’d hoped for it, but he hadn’t really expected an admission. 

He glanced at Grantly for guidance, and saw that he was smiling at Macquarie’s candour.

Sacha got back on track with some difficulty. “Traveller Macquarie, where did you buy the Agex?”

“In the street,” said Macquarie.

“Not in the bar?” Sacha asked, narrowing his eyes at him. Apparently that admission wouldn’t be offered up so freely.  

“Nope,” said Macquarie. He was looking him in the face, but Sacha got the impression he wasn’t really seeing. He wondered again if he’d been ready to interview. He would hate to have a soft magistrate throw out the interview, although in his scant experience none of the magistrates in the Crewman Quarter were exactly sympathetic to the parade of filthy defendants that passed in front of the bench. But Sacha felt it would be just his luck to get the only one.

“Who did you buy it off?” he pressed. He’d said at Railroad’s that it came from the guy passed out in the booth, one of Jason Tam’s arrests. _No,_ he reminded himsef, _he didn’t say. He just_ looked, _and I assumed._

“Don’t know his name,” said Macquarie.

 Sacha knew that was a lie as well, probably. “Um, can you describe him?”

“Nope,” said Macquarie, and folded his arms across his chest. 

Sacha consulted his notebook again, and saw that he’d run out of questions.  

“He’s new, right?” Macquarie asked Grantly suddenly. “I asked him back at Railroad’s, but he didn’t say.”

Grantly smiled again and nodded. “Quite new, yes.”

Sacha shifted uncomfortably.

Macquarie leaned towards him and lowered his voice. “How do you feel it’s going?” he whispered in a friendly tone.

Sacha looked at him askance. _What the hell?_ But he kept his mouth shut, aware that the recorder continued to tick over.  

The boss leaned over and flicked the recorder off. “This interview is over.”

Sacha met Grantly’s eyes, but they didn’t tell him anything. 

“I’m just playing with you, Officer,” said Macquarie with a curious smile. “Look, you’ve got me on the possession, I’m not giving you anything else.”

Sacha remembered himself. “If you do, then I can recommend the magistrate is lenient.”

“I doubt that,” he answered. “Not with my record.”

Sacha kicked himself. He should have remembered to go through his criminal history before the interview. He felt like every time he remembered to do one thing, another one just dropped out of his head.

 Sacha looked at the gridscreen belatedly and saw a list of offences that would have been impressive on a man with twice his years.

“Macquarie’s no stranger to detention,” said Grantly said, and Sacha wondered if he imagined the hint of rebuke in his voice at the lapse. “You’ll see that he was first arrested when he was eight years old, and first sent to detention when he was eleven. How old are you now, Macquarie? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

“I’ve lost track.”

“It says twenty here,” Sacha told the boss, anxious to get something right.

“How about that?” He had a cheeky smile but Sacha was immune to it. “We’re both just a couple of crazy kids. Hey, maybe it will work out for us after all. What do you say? I’m up for it if you are.”  

Sacha narrowed his eyes at him. He wasn’t just a strung-out junkie, he realised, he was a smug arsehole as well, teasing him with his youth and his inexperience. Doing his job for him by reminding him that the magistrate wouldn’t look leniently at his record. Asking him if he thought it was going well. Calling him a kid. He burned with embarrassment.

He was getting under his skin, and the bastard knew it.

Grantly wasn’t even offended on Sacha’s behalf. He seemed faintly amused, and that stung as well. 

Grantly said, “Macquarie is a recidivist offender, Harper. He’s been in and out of detention for the best part of a decade. He will never tell you more in an interview than he has to. He wouldn’t admit to having ten fingers and toes unless he knew you could prove it first.”

Traveller Macquarie smiled as well.

Sacha doubted the boss would find it as amusing if Macquarie was mocking him. He pressed his lips together thinly. 

“His attitude remains, however, his own,” said Grantly, and rested his elbows on the table. “I’d tell you to watch your mouth, son, but I don’t think you know how.”

Sacha was somewhat mollified as the boss admonished Macquarie gently. It was done in that same even tone he always used, but Sacha knew, and so did Macquarie probably, that the boss didn’t have to raise his voice to make a point. 

“I blow hot and cold,” said Macquarie. He closed his eyes again. His eyelids twitched.

 _God,_ Sacha thought. _What’s the point?_

“He’s also currently going through withdrawal,” Grantly told Sacha. “Macquarie talks a lot during withdrawal. So do a lot of junkies. That’s a usual piece of information for you to know, Sacha.” He rested his elbows on the desk and turned his attention back to Macquarie. “Son, how often do you need a fix nowadays?”

Sacha looked at the grubby fingers Macquarie scrubbed against his temples. The bitten-down nails were black with grime.

His words, when they came, were disjointed. He was frowning, as though he was having difficulty bringing them up. “Depends. Once a day, at least once a day. More though, sometimes, you know, if I gotta be floating.” He opened his eyes. “You know, if there’s things I don’t want my eyes to see. I want to say no regrets, I do, but there they are all the same. I mean, I want to get straight, but every time it gets to this it’s just too hard.”

“You’re in trouble, son, I think,” said Grantly.

Sacha glanced at him. Grantly was always sympathetic to the junkies and the drunks, and they responded to it. Sacha sensed that there was more in play here than the boss’s usual tactics though. He looked at the gridscreen, at Macquarie’s criminal history, and tried to see how far they went back, the two of them. There were too many entries for him to make sense of quickly. 

Grantly’s eyes were still on Macquarie.

Macquarie nodded gratefully. “Yeah. Yeah. The other day when I was here I got a sedative. That was good. Put me right out. Can I have one?”

“That was three weeks ago, son,” said Grantly.

“Was it? I didn’t realise.” He closed his eyes again.

Sacha shook his head slightly in disgust. 

Grantly nodded. “But I’m sure I can arrange something to tide you over, if you want to give me some answers. What do you say?”

Sacha met Macquarie’s eyes. They were bloodshot, unfocussed. He wore a confused frown. “Know what this is? This is inducement.”

Sacha kept his face impassive, but his stomach tensed. He was right.

“If I could afford a solicitor, we’d talk some more about that with the magistrate.” Macquarie smiled faintly. “Can’t though, so there you are. It’s not just inducement though, it’s withholding medical care, and that’s breaking the rules, LEO. I know the rules.”

“Your type always does,” said the boss smoothly.  

“So does yours,” said Macquarie. “And sometimes they break them.”

Grantly leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Who’s your dealer, son?”

Macquarie fixed his wavering gaze on Grantly’s face. For a moment Sacha thought he wouldn’t answer, and then he said: “It’s not murder. It’s more assisted suicide.”

Sacha raised his eyebrows.

 _They should take a scan of his brain,_ he thought, _and put in on those posters in schools: Don’t Do Drugs._

“What is?” Grantly asked. He exchanged a glance with Sacha.

“Agex,” said Macquarie.

Grantly leaned forward in his seat. “Are you suicidal, son? Do you want to hurt yourself?”

That was more paperwork, Sacha knew. Ironic that he’d chosen him in the raid because he looked straight-forward. His simple little arrest was fast turning into a real headache.

They had looked like cockroaches caught when the lights flickered on, Sacha thought, when the LEOs had busted into Railroad’s. They had been trapped there, frozen in the light, just dying to scuttle back into their filthy boltholes but too afraid to move. And Sacha had picked what he thought was an easy target, a young man with what he was beginning to recognise as the preternatural bright eyes and twitch of an Agex junkie.

But apparently there was nothing simple about Traveller Macquarie.

“This way doesn’t hurt,” he answered at last in a voice a little above a whisper. Then he shook his head slightly as though trying to clear it. “Just because I want to kill myself doesn’t mean I’m crazy. Suicidal tendencies aren’t always indicative of mental illness. It’s possible to get there using a rational process of thought.”

“You’re not rational,” Grantly pointed out. “You’re drug affected.”

 _Drug-fucked, more like,_ Sacha thought. His day had dragged on too long to waste any sympathy on Macquarie. He hated him for mentioning suicide. That was a whole new entry that had to be added to the custody index, and how long would that take? He’d be here all night.

“I am now, maybe, sure,” said Macquarie. He was briefly distracted by the frayed knee of his grimy cargo pants. “I can hardly keep it together right now, but these are the thoughts I have when I’m straight as well, these were formulated long before, and you know, what’s crazy anyhow?”

Sacha looked at Grantly for direction, but the boss’s eyes were fixed on Macquarie’s pale face, as though by the force of his concentration alone he could bring him back to lucidity.

“I need to clarify,” said Macquarie. He scratched the inside of his elbow, scrubbing his filthy nails over the bruises, punctures and scabs of his addiction.  “It’s a philosophical issue, absurdity and all that. It’s not just the negation of all other systems of belief, although it seems that way from where you’re sitting.”

 _Not a brain scan for that poster,_ Sacha thought,  _just a transcript of all his bullshit would do the trick._

It was late, and he was tired, and not in the mood to listen to this rubbish.

Macquarie was still going. “It’s a brave new world in reality, it’s _liberating_ , and I didn’t just say it to get onto suicide watch and get my own cell and stuff, though it would be nice, you know, because sooner or later caged animals turn on one another, that’s just a natural law, and I’m fairly certain the bloke in the red shirt is a chronic masturbator, he’s had his hand down his pants the whole time since the raid, and nobody wants to see that.” He laughed.

 _Drug-fucked,_ thought Sacha again.

“I knew you’d have to draw breath sooner or later,” said Grantly when he was finally given the chance. “Listen to me. Are you listening?”

Macquarie twitched suddenly. “Yeah, I am.”

“You’re going back to your cell now,” said Grantly. “Try and sleep it off.”

 _Thank the Navigator,_ thought Sacha.

“Can’t sleep this off,” said Macquarie. “Not what I’ve got. Can I have a sedative?”

“No,” said Grantly smoothly.

Sacha was surprised at the refusal, and couldn’t look the boss in the eye. Macquarie had been right: It was withholding medical care. It was against regulations, and what if he remembered when he was straight and made a complaint?

“LEO Harper,” said the boss, “please escort your prisoner back to his cell.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sacha. He stood up.

Macquarie rose to his feet. He scratched his head and gave an incredulous laugh. “That’s breaking the rules. Fuck, I don’t even know why I’m surprised!”

Sacha, with one hand on his shoulder, heard Grantly’s reply as he manoeuvred Macquarie out of the interview room and back towards the cells:

“Neither do I, son. Sleep well.”

 

 

 

Afterwards, Sacha found Chris Weber in the shower room, getting changed into jeans and a shirt.

“Chris, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said, bundling his uniform into his backpack. He leaned against the bank of dented lockers.

“Was there something wrong with my arrest?”

“No,” he said, and frowned, buttoning up his shirt. “How come?”

“Because the boss didn’t send him up to court,” Sacha said, glancing at the closed door. He didn’t want to be overheard.

“Really?” Chris asked. He studied the ceiling for a moment. “No, it was a solid arrest. What did he do with him?”

“Gave him release conditions,” said Sacha.

“Well, he can do that,” Chris told him thoughtfully. “He’s got more discretionary powers than we do.”

“The thing is,” Sacha said. “I looked at his arrest record, and he was in here for drunk a few weeks ago and was released as well.”

“Yeah,” said Chris slowly. “Yeah, we had to get the doctor in.” He zipped up his jacket. “The thing is, Sacha, about the Quarter, is there’s still a lot of feeling here, you know?”

Sacha made a face.

“The boss knows what he’s doing,” said Chris.

Sacha looked him in the eye and wondered if he really believed that. “Okay.”

He thought there was something he wasn’t saying, and it was so unlike Chris that it made Sacha afraid to ask.

That night Sacha didn’t sleep. He lay awake in his narrow bed in his room in the barracks and stared at the ceiling. The arrest had been solid, so why had the boss released Macquarie? It didn’t matter that he had the discretion to do it. Sacha wanted to know why.

What the hell was so special about Traveller Macquarie that nobody was telling him?

He tried to put it from his mind, but it was difficult. Something about it felt off. There was more going on than anyone would tell him, and it made him uncomfortable.

“You did your job, Sacha,” he told himself in a firm voice as he stared at the ceiling. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

There was some consolation in that, and he held onto it.

It took a long time for him to fall asleep that night.  


	13. Chapter 13

“Thank you, Weber, Harper,” said Grantly quietly when they told him, and the door clicked shut behind the pair of them. 

Grantly leaned back in his chair and looked at the paperwork that overflowed from his shelves. He almost smiled, and then thought better of it.

There was a boy once, Grantly remembered, who’d looked at the LEOs he passed in the street and knew without doubt that he wanted to be one. He must have equated them somehow with something heroic back then, but Grantly couldn’t remember exactly, just like he couldn’t remember what had happened to that boy that he’d turned into the man he’d become. He couldn’t remember when the fantasy had proven hollow, and thought it must have been a gradual process.

It wasn’t three years ago with the death in custody and the Daly Commission that followed it, despite what anyone thought. It had begun a long time before that. When he’d come in that morning and seen what they’d done to the prisoners, Grantly hadn’t been surprised, not really. Horrified, and afraid, but not really surprised.

He hadn’t even run down to the cells.

 _Boss,_ said some of them when he walked in that morning, not really meeting his eyes, and Grantly knew something was wrong. He looked at all of them, and then turned and walked down to the cells.

“Call the doctor!” he’d shouted back down the hallway when he’d seen.

“What is it, boss?”

He couldn’t remember now which one of them had asked, a failing that had been thrown up at him again and again at the Commission hearings by Lillian Daly herself, but even at the time the question had rung false. They knew. They knew, because they’d done this.

Roberts was dead, already in rigour, so Grantly didn’t touch him. He was already thinking ahead to scene examination, photographs, and forensic evidence. The practicalities.

Macquarie was still alive, and Grantly had thought at time, abstractedly, that they couldn’t have intended that. And that it must have been done in the heat of the moment, because if you want to make a murder look like a suicide you don’t leave a breathing witness in the opposite cell. That was only common sense, and they’d fucked that up as well.

These thoughts never would have occurred to that boy who’d looked at the LEOs with admiration and longing. That boy had thought all LEOs were heroes.

Grantly remembered that his hand shook as he turned the key in the lock of the cell door.

Yesterday he’d thought the boy was a grub, a little smartarse, but today he looked like a child. His dirty blond hair was matted with blood.

Grantly went down onto his knees beside him. His fingers slid through blood as he felt around the boy’s throat for the carotid artery, and he remembered out of the blue that he’d nicked his hand that morning when he was cutting Hannah’s toast, and that he wasn’t wearing gloves. And that it was too late, by the time he felt a pulse, to worry about that now.

“Open your eyes, son,” he said. He heard footsteps in the narrow hallway behind him, and didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see who it was. “Come on, open your eyes. I’m trying to help you.”

He wasn’t unconscious; his hands were shaking and he kept clenching and unclenching his jaw.

“What happened here, son?” Grantly asked. “What happened? Where are you hurt?”

His eyes, in his blood-streaked face, snapped open. Grantly hadn’t noted their colour the day before, but he saw now that they were green, bright green. The clarity of those eyes, the brilliance of them, was obscene in his bruised, bloody face.

Grantly’s hands moved over his limbs, searching for breaks. He tried to draw him out straight, thinking that it might have been an abdominal injury because he was hunched over that way.

Davey Macquarie gasped for breath.

“It’s okay,” said Grantly. “Do you hear me?”

Those green eyes stared wildly at him.

“Oh, son,” said Grantly. He wanted to be sick. His career was finished. “It’s okay.”

The boy narrowed his brilliant eyes: “I don’t need your fucking sympathy.”

Grantly stayed with him until the doctor came, and then left the cell. He couldn’t look at Roberts when he did. He couldn’t physically bring himself to turn his head.

He walked into the dayroom, covered in Davey Macquarie’s blood. “Call the Consulate.”

And then everything changed.

There must have been some vestiges of that idealistic boy in him still, Grantly discovered, because it had never occurred to him to lie for his subordinates. And later, when he wore the cold looks of other LEOs from other stations, he wondered if he should have. Should he have calculated it until he got the answer they wanted: Two terrorist suspects against the five LEOs who had been on duty in the station at the time? It had never occurred to him though, and even afterwards when he ran through what he could have done differently, he still saw only that one path he’d taken that day.

Rumours and whispers questioned his loyalty, and it had rankled with Grantly. _His_ loyalty? What about his team’s loyalty? They’d killed a man, and they’d killed Grantly’s career, his credibility, and his reputation, and never even apologised for that, not one of them. It made him sick to the stomach when he saw them at the Daly Commission, and the glances they threw at him: _What’s he going to say?_ How could they even imagine that he could tell anything but the truth? What did they think he was?

Because, in hindsight, Grantly could have saved them. Davey Macquarie, the only witness to the murder, had vanished. When it became apparent that he was gone, a trait of Macquarie’s that he hadn’t lost it seemed, the LEOs adjusted accordingly. It was Macquarie who resisted, they said, who assaulted the LEOs first, and if they had used excessive force then they would face those charges instead. And Roberts had killed himself.

It was Grantly who told the truth: Macquarie was locked in his cell when he left for the night, and so was Roberts, they were both uninjured at that time, and that was all he knew.

The forensic evidence backed Grantly’s crew up, to a point. There had been a struggle, but exactly when it had taken place they couldn’t tell. It had happened during Roberts’ arrest, said the LEOs, or during a later struggle at the station as he was being placed in his cell, they had both resisted violently, but Grantly had already testified: They had both been in their cells, uninjured, when he left.

It was enough for the Daly Commission; Lillian Daly and her fellow commissioners weren’t fools.

If he’d backed them, he thought later, they might have even walked. If he’d just agreed for one moment during cross-examination that there had been a struggle, he could have saved his crew. And maybe he should have, he thought, because what were Roberts and Macquarie but terrorists? If not that, at least arms dealers.

And maybe he would have lied, he thought later, if anyone in his team had come to him and asked. If they’d told him what happened, if they’d called him in early to help, if they’d done anything except let him walk straight into it like that. They had betrayed Grantly. He’d thought he could trust them.

So now he was stuck in the Crewman Quarter because nowhere else would have him, in his late forties, with a broken marriage behind him, and a career that had been sidelined three years ago. And his new crew were all kids. Sometimes when he sat at his desk and listened to them telling their little war stories outside, Grantly thought of the old days. Henderson and Wano would never let a drunk at Railroads get the better of them, and part of him missed those days and that team that wouldn’t tolerate any bullshit from the locals, but the price had been too high.

Even if they were terrorists, Grantly told himself, the price had been too high.

He held onto the thought because he believed it was the truth. If it was, he learned later, than the truth was less immutable than he’d previously known. There were grey areas, he learned from the cold glances of his colleagues, and even his superiors. And Grantly had always known there were grey areas but he had been naive enough to think, even after all those years in the job, that there was a line to be drawn. Grantly drew that line at a death in custody and wondered where everyone else drew theirs, what was possibly left.

These LEOs were a new generation; young, book smart, keen, and held to a higher standard. That was the work of the Daly Commission, and for all that Lillian Daly and her cohorts had done to his career Grantly didn’t begrudge it. He saw, more than anyone, that it was absolutely necessary.

What had happened in his cells, what was done by his team, it couldn’t be allowed to happen again. It was too terrible.

 _I don’t need your fucking sympathy,_ Davey Macquarie had spat at him, but the blood and the pain and the tears he had tried too hard to hide had all belied his vicious words. 

_Oh, son._

He was just a dumb kid, caught up in it all when it turned to shit, when Grantly’s crew betrayed him. Grantly was enough of a realist to know that if Davey Macquarie hadn’t been so young, hadn’t been so _beautiful_ – the word still seemed awkward when he thought it, when he used it to describe a boy – then it wouldn’t have cut him so much. But somehow it mattered. They’d killed a man, and turned that smartarse, cocky kid into the broken, wretched, drug-fucked thing he was today. And maybe Davey would have got there on his own, probably he would have, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t the point, and Grantly had to believe that.

If Davey Macquarie’s face had been as ugly as his lifestyle, would Grantly have been so conflicted? He couldn’t tell.

_Oh, son._

Grantly’s visceral reaction that day had shocked him, shocked Grantly, who’d walked into murder scenes before with calm deliberation, deaf to the wails of accusation and the piteous cries of bereavement. But the moment he’d seen that boy lying curled up on the floor of the cell in his own blood, Grantly had wanted to pick him up, clean him off, and take him home. It was a sudden paternal response that he had never expected, that nothing in his work had inspired in him before, but Davey Macquarie was just a kid, a golden kid with brilliant green eyes whose life had been ruined because of Grantly and his team.

That was the difference, maybe. Grantly had seen a lot of victims in his time, but he had never had to turn his gaze inward to find the reason.

And Grantly couldn’t fix Col Roberts, couldn’t fix his team, so he had needed to believe, against all of his experience, that he could somehow fix Davey Macquarie.

 _Oh, son,_ he’d said, and nobody knew except Grantly that he actually meant it. That somehow, in all of it, he’d thought he could hold Davey Macquarie like he was Hannah the day she fell off the monkey bars outside the rations depot, until the hurt went away. Looking back it was ludicrous; like what had happened was nothing more than a scraped knee, a bumped head, as though it could be made better with just the force and clarity of a dad’s sympathy.

 _Oh, son._ It was no surprise that Davey Macquarie didn’t hear behind the words. What was Grantly to him but another LEO in a dark blue uniform and steel-capped boots? What those things now represented to Davey Macquarie, who the day before had mocked them all with his sardonic smile, had sickened Grantly. 

And Davey Macquarie deserved his revenge for that, for all those things that had happened that night in the cells.

The boy Grantly had been once, and then the youth, couldn’t even look.

_“Smile, Paul!”_

_“Mum!” Grantly complained, but smiled obediently for the camera. He glanced around the auditorium, and saw embarrassing parents throughout it, photographing, hugging and badgering the graduates._

_Katya’s mother was trying to adjust her hat. She saw Grantly watching, and rolled her eyes. Grantly smiled at her._

_“She’s nice,” his mother said._

_“She’s very nice,” Grantly replied, checking for the hundredth time that day that his shirt was still sitting straight, “but she’s got Commission and I’ve got Crewman.”_

_His mother looked worried. “Oh, Paul, how could they give you Crewman?”_

_“I asked for it,” Grantly told her, “and I was dux so I got first choice. It’s okay, Mum. It’ll be good. It’s only a two year posting, and everywhere else is three, and after that I can go anywhere.”_

_“It’s only two years because it’s so horrible that nobody wants it,” his mother told him._

_“It’ll be fine,” Grantly said._

_“Of course it will,” his mother agreed, and Grantly saw that she didn’t believe it._

_He hugged her fiercely. “It’ll be fine.”_

Secretly he had been terrified. He had worried that he wasn’t tough enough to be an LEO, and worried that it wasn’t something he could learn. He had been afraid he’d hesitate when he should act. He had been afraid he’d let down the side.

Grantly had been determined not to fail. He had been determined to make this his job, despite his nerves. He had been determined to find something nice about the Crewman Quarter that would shut his parents up when he visited them on leave. He had chosen the Crewman Quarter specifically because it was different than anything he had ever known, and Grantly had known that if he could find his feet there he could find his feet anywhere. He had needed to challenge himself.

He had never imagined where it would lead him, how it would change him. He couldn’t even look at his graduation picture these days. He didn’t recognise that proud, smiling LEO, and a part of him didn’t want to make the effort. 

Grantly hadn’t seen his parents in three years. He hadn’t seen his ex-wife and his daughter since the Daly Commission. His job, the thing that had betrayed him, was all he had left. Grantly didn’t even mind the irony anymore.

Davey Macquarie’s reappearance into the world, and the unresolved emotions it brought, had taken Grantly by surprise.

_Oh, son._

He still felt it, even after all these years, and it had seemed impossible to Grantly at first because Davey Macquarie had changed so much; the bruises, the track marks, the deprivation, and the skin pulled so tight across his skull. The stink of him was bad enough, but it was nothing compared to the revulsion Grantly had felt when he realised what Macquarie did for a living. Because everyone who looked like that, stank like that, who was marked with tracks like that, did the same thing. Grantly hardly recognised him.

And then, like a switch had been thrown, Grantly had seen that golden boy just under the hard surface, and those green eyes that still said more than the rest of him did.

They slipped very easily into their roles, Grantly thought; Grantly, the old, wise LEO, and Macquarie, the smartarse recidivist offender. It was only surface deep, Grantly thought, like Macquarie’s new ugliness and his own grey hairs. Underneath they were the same people they had been that day, when both their masks had slipped for the briefest moment in time.

Grantly wasn’t a martyr, and didn’t blame himself for Macquarie and his myriad of sins. Macquarie had always been on that path, more or less, and the only thing Roberts’ death had done was shorten it. They both knew it, just like they both knew Macquarie could have been better, if he’d tried. So Grantly steered him towards realisation and rehab at the same time, and Macquarie dodged them both with his knowing smile. 

They both still played their parts.

Grantly’s new kids didn’t get it, like they’d been thrown on stage in the middle of the performance without the benefit of the script while Grantly and Macquarie moved around one another with old, practiced steps. They’d both learned this back in the bad old days, an age-old routine they knew in their sleep, and the new kids struggled to keep up.

That was another legacy of the Daly Commission: offenders who knew their rights, and invoked them the moment they were picked up. Not Macquarie. Macquarie took it all in his stride, a workplace hazard, just like they all did in the old days.

He didn’t complain about being binned for drunk, didn’t try and dodge out of his drug arrest, didn’t bother demand legal representation. The only thing that he’d thrown in their faces was the lack of medical care and that, Grantly knew, was the Agex talking more than Davey Macquarie.

It was simpler in the old days: Grantly hated the thought but had to acknowledge it. Everyone knew their part. There was nothing personal in it, the cycle of arrests and releases, not until Solomon Day and his grubby campaign to destroy the world had changed everything.

_Were you selling weapons to Solomon Day?_

He’d had to ask, even though he was afraid of the answer. It shouldn’t have mattered, because what his crew did that night was wrong, but Grantly still had to know.

 _Let it go, Grantly,_ Macquarie had told him in a tired voice, _everyone else has._

 _Not us,_ Grantly had thought. _Not by a long shot._

It had remained unsaid at the time, and Grantly wasn’t sure why.

They had ruined Grantly’s marriage, his career, and his friendships, and they had ruined Davey Macquarie as well. He’d had potential once, shining through his clever green eyes, and what was Davey Macquarie now? A drug-fucked rent boy operating on a series of diminishing returns, with a predictable ending that couldn’t be too far away.

Grantly had seen it all before.

 _Oh, son_ , Grantly had said that awful morning in the cell, and maybe if Davey Macquarie had listened to him, had heard the sincerity in his voice, had believed it like Grantly suddenly did, maybe now he would have been something very different. Maybe he wouldn’t have talked about suicide like it was a philosophical issue, instead of self-hatred.

If he really didn’t care, Grantly knew, he wouldn’t want to kill himself.

Grantly himself couldn’t believe that suicide could ever be a rational decision. Hadn’t he looked at his firearm every day during the Daly Commission and really thought about it? Thought about how it could solve everything? Enough time had passed that Grantly knew now what he was during that time; angry, embittered, and lost, even though he hadn’t known it then. That realisation only came with hindsight.

It might come to Davey Macquarie too, if he gave it time.

 _You’re not rational,_ he’d warned Macquarie the day of his interview. _You’re drug affected._

Macquarie’s answer had been rambling, he remembered now, but he’d had a point in the end, of sorts: _What’s crazy anyhow?_

There was no reasoning with some people, Grantly knew. Sometimes it was a waste of effort. He’d tried to talk enough down jumpers during his career, and still remembered one more than most: Pete Quinn. Grantly had tried all the old tricks: _Come on, Pete._ _What about your parents? Your girlfriend? Your kids?_ _Your mates?_

If it hadn’t been so serious he would have laughed at the absurdity of it, because Pete Quinn had a negative answer to everything Grantly threw at him. His parents had died, both within a few months, and his girlfriend’s baby had been stillborn. The girlfriend had left him after that, he’d lost his job, and he had no friends. He was the first person Grantly had ever seen who had absolutely nothing to live for, and he had been completely stuck for words. _Jesus,_ he’d realised with a start, _I’d kill myself too._

Davey Macquarie wasn’t the second, because for all that Macquarie believed he had nothing to live for, he had something. He had potential, and even at his lowest point he remembered it. And he had Grantly, who’d said, _Oh, son_ to him that awful morning, even if he didn’t realise what it meant. It still held.

Pete Quinn hadn’t jumped and neither, Grantly was sure, would Davey Macquarie.

He’d escaped. Suicidal people wouldn’t bother.

Davey Macquarie was still looking for something, something that was proving elusive for him, but it was there somewhere. Maybe not in the Crewman Quarter, maybe not in Grantly, and certainly not in Agex, but, even if he didn’t quite realise it, somewhere in Davey Macquarie was a spark that wanted to continue burning. 

It had got him out of the Rats’ Nest, if any of that was true, and it had got him out of Grantly’s hands as well. It wasn’t nothing.

Grantly had seen it before. It was the cleverness that shone in his eyes and curled the corners of his mouth. It was the arching of his brows in amusement, and the sceptical gleam. It was his flash-in-the-pan smile, and his mordacity. He was a true cynic, Grantly knew, and true cynics didn’t kill themselves, however philosophical a decision they believed suicide might be.

And Macquarie had run, a thing suddenly alive, and he’d given the slip to Chris Weber and Sacha Harper, who’d just reported back in now with worried faces and stammers. Grantly almost wished he’d seen it himself.

There was paperwork to do now, an operation to get organised, the Consulate to notify, and a hundred other things to do to bring Davey Macquarie back into custody.

 _Oh, son,_ he’d said on that day, looking at the broken boy.

He’d run though, too clever to just lay down and die like he said he wanted.

Davey Macquarie had run, and, as he studied the overflowing folders in danger of toppling from the shelves of his office, Grantly felt himself smile. 


	14. Chapter 14

Sacha Harper sat on the floor of the locker room and cried. When he was finished he leaned his head back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He could taste the bile in his throat. It made him want to throw up.

“Fuck! I’m going to lose my fucking job!” he moaned into his hands. “Fucking arsehole! _Fuck!”_

He hit the floor with his fists until it hurt. He was a mess. Tears and snot and a ball of frustration in his gut so big he felt like throwing up. And it was all because of some stupid worthless fucking junkie that he was going to lose his job.

Questions needed to be asked, LEO Grantly had said, and he’d said it like he knew the whole team was in the shit. And even if they were, it was Sacha and Chris who were in the most danger of fronting up at the dole office afterwards. They had been escorting Davey Macquarie, after all, when he’d made his miraculous escape.

“It’ll be okay,” Chris had told him as they’d walked back to the station house after they’d lost him. “It’ll be okay. We fucked up, but it’ll be okay.”

He said it so many times that Sacha didn’t believe a word of it.

Grantly would probably get off with a reprimand from Control. He’d been too lenient with Macquarie, whose pattern of arrests should have sent him to detention much earlier, but that was nothing compared to losing the fucking prisoner. Sacha Harper, four months into his probationary period as an LEO, wasn’t naive enough to think his career could recover from this. He knew his youth and inexperience would count against him when the time came to look for a scapegoat.

He couldn’t believe he was going to lose his job because of a junkie.

Sacha Harper had wanted to be an LEO ever since the Production bombing. He had been home sick from school that day, in his parents’ flat in the Commission, and as soon as the grid had come back online there was footage of it everywhere. Production had been the worst hit. Sacha sat glued to the screen, thinking that the world was ending and marvelling at the footage of the LEOs: they were bloody, covered in dust, and walking back into the carnage that everyone else was fleeing. Sacha cried as he watched. Levels were coming down still, there were confused reports of further bombs still going off and massive decompressions that threatened the entire world, and the LEOs were walking back in.

In the weeks that followed, as life slowly got back to normal and people stopped talking about it, Sacha still thought of those LEOs. Without knowing now how many of them had made it out alive, he knew that it was the job he wanted.

When it came down to it, he knew, it was mostly about arresting criminals and doing paperwork, but he felt that to be surrounded by people who would walk in to a place when everyone else was running out would be something special.

His parents tried to dissuade him. He was clever enough to go to college. There were other government jobs he could get with the same benefits and none of the risk. Could he handle himself in a fight? Had he thought about the awful things he would have to deal with? Sacha had, and he felt he needed to test himself.

He graduated from the academy the day before his nineteenth birthday, and now here he was, four months later, and it was all about to crash down.

And just when he was getting the hang of the bloody paperwork.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed again, kicking out at the lockers. His boot connected with a satisfying crash, and then he remembered he was meant to be kitting up like the LEO he still was, instead of chucking a tantrum like a kid.

He stood up and wrenched his locker door open. In the small spotted mirror inside his locker door he looked at his face. It was splotchy, red and tear-stained. He wiped it with his sleeve, and drew several deep breaths.

There were two canisters of capsicum spray in his locker, and he shoved them into his utility belt. He checked his sidearm, and added an extra clip of ammo to his belt as well, hanging it beside his taser. If he saw Macquarie again, there was no way in hell he’d give him a second chance to vanish.

He wiped his face again, adjusted the stab-vest under his shirt, and headed back downstairs to meet the boss.

LEO Grantly was waiting for him in the dayroom. The whole team was there as well, and none of them quite looked Sacha in the eye. Not even Jason Tam, and he’d had a crush on him since his first day. He was sweet, and had a sexy smile, and Sacha had caught him in the barracks shower room once wearing just a towel.

Most of the guys at the barracks were single, Linda had told Sacha on his first day, although you shouldn’t go there. It could get messy, Linda told him. She knew it from experience. If it was a casual thing that was okay, but sooner or later someone would want to get serious and before you knew it you couldn’t work together anymore, everybody found out, and somebody ended up transferred. And then you found out they’d been sleeping with their ex-girlfriend the whole time. _Or maybe that’s just me_ , Linda had said with a loud laugh, and Sacha had warmed to her immediately.

Sacha didn’t expect much from Jason Tam, but they’d flirted enough he thought there was _something_ , and it annoyed him that he didn’t even meet his eyes.    

Sacha was surprised that Grantly did, and actually gave him a slight smile.

Chris was slouched in front of a gridscreen. He looked pale and worried.

Nobody told Sacha what was going on.

“You’ve all got your assignments,” Grantly told the team. “Get out there and shake things up. Harper, you’re with me.”

“Sir,” he said in a small voice that didn’t sound like his own.

Outside the station house he tried to remember himself. He tried to walk like a confident LEO instead of the bundle of nerves he was. Every time he thought about Traveller Macquarie he wanted to cry again, and he was sure that Grantly could tell.

The boss walked at his usual measured pace, as though nothing in the world troubled him.

Sacha could resist asking: “Excuse me, sir, but why did you want me with you?”

Grantly glanced at him. “Why wouldn’t I, Harper?”

Sacha screwed up his nose. “Because I stuffed up. Chris and I stuffed up.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Grantly, but Sacha doubted he’d be so generous in front of the Consulate Board of Inquiry.

“I don’t know what happened,” Sacha said, feeling his throat start to swell. He fought it down. “I don’t know how we lost him.”

Grantly didn’t say anything.

“Am I going to lose my job?” Sacha asked quietly, and realised it wasn’t the thought of losing his job that mattered. He could get another job. It was the thought of going home, and the humiliation of having to tell his friends and family what he had done. And he couldn’t lie. They would know. People would _know._

Grantly actually smiled. “Why would you lose your job?”

“Because he was in custody and we _lost_ him?” Sacha reminded him, incredulous.

Grantly’s smile grew a fraction. “Do you think I’d lose two of my best officers just because they couldn’t outrun a grub? It can be made to go away, Sacha.”

Sacha opened his mouth to answer, and then shut it again. He didn’t know what the boss meant by making it go away, but he wasn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth. He was new enough to wonder if there was a time when he’d regret that, if there was a time he would be called to account, but he had been in the Crewman Quarter just long enough to let it go. Turning a blind eye to unethical practices, they told them at the academy, was just as bad as corruption, but Sacha saw now that it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.

They turned onto the Blue Stairs and headed down into the lowest parts of the Crewman Quarter.

“Sir,” he said, wondering if he even had the right to ask, “What’s so special about Traveller Macquarie?”

“Davey,” said Grantly meditatively, “might be more than we think.”

It wasn’t an answer, but Sacha knew it was the best he was going to get.

“And why did you pick me to come with you, sir?”

“He likes you,” said Grantly simply.

Sacha was surprised.

“Between us, Sacha,” said LEO Grantly, “we’ve come the closest to anyone in getting a straight answer out of Davey Macquarie.”

“Is he hiding something?” Sacha asked.

They had reached a sleeping drunk. Grantly knelt down beside the man and checked for a pulse. Sacha stood back, ready in case he woke up angry.

The drunk only mumbled and rolled over, and they moved on again. 

“He’s hiding everything,” said Grantly. “The difficulty is picking out the relevant bits.”

“Is any of it relevant?”

“It may be,” Grantly replied. “I think this is it.”

They turned off the Blue Stairs.

Their destination was a five minute walk from the Stairs into the labyrinth of the squats and shanties that made up the lower part of the Crewman Quarter. Grantly seemed to know his way. Sacha followed him, one hand on his firearm. He flicked the holster open with his thumb, wary of the close passageways, the broken lights and the open doors that led into filthy little lives. Unfriendly eyes looked out at them from decrepit squats as they moved past. Shrill voices fell silent for a moment, and then picked up again behind them. 

Grantly seemed to be able to tell one door from another. He stopped at one at last, a locked one, and inspected it carefully.

“Yes,” he said. “This is it.”

He forced the door.

“Oh, _Jesus_ ,” said Sacha when the smell hit him, and then remembered what he should have been doing.

He resisted the urge to cover his mouth and nose as he moved into the squat, shining his torch before him.

The squat was no better or worse than most Sacha had seen since starting in the Crewman Quarter, but this one stank. There was a ration pack sitting opened on the floor, and whatever used to be inside it was grey now, and flyblown. It also smelled like the pipes had backed up and overflowed. He hadn’t known that smell before coming to the Quarter: sewage. 

He thought immediately that Macquarie couldn’t have been there for ages, but he knew better than to judge junkies by his standards.

The squat was bigger than some he had seen. It was two rooms and a tiny bathroom. It must have been quarters for a family once, back when families still lived in this part of the world. The junkies and grubs owned it now, and it showed.

LEO Grantly hit the light switch. For a long time nothing happened, and then slowly a single florescent bulb set into the ceiling flickered on.

In the light it looked worse. Sacha was almost afraid to breathe: The flyblown foodpack, the stains on the ragged carpet, the discarded bloody syringes, the filthy mattress in the back, and, as he’d suspected, the pipe in the bathroom that had busted and left the floor covered in stinking waste.

Macquarie wasn’t there. 

“Oh, God,” said Sacha, sliding his torch back into his belt. He looked at the words written on the wall. There were too many of them, and they were random and fractured. If this was a window into a junkie’s psyche, Sacha wondered how he’d strung a coherent sentence together at all: _Memory. Laborious. Echo. Lie. Callas._ This was what drugs did.

Sacha felt his lip curl.

He expected to see his disdain mirrored in Grantly’s face, but when he turned around to look he found that he had his notebook out and was copying the words down.

“Do you think there’s something in it, sir?” he asked doubtfully.

“Might be,” said Grantly.

Sacha looked at the words again. He knew that Agex was a choice, just a bad choice. Sacha didn’t like to judge anyone by one bad choice, but with Agex he couldn’t help it. Even those who’d finished their rehab and managed to stay clean you could pick. They were the ones who talked to themselves, or to God and the Navigator, because it had destroyed their minds before they’d got it out of their systems. Looking at the words that Macquarie had left scrawled across the filthy walls of the squat, Sacha knew it would be better for him if they shot him in the street. The drug only ever ended one way, so why would anyone take that first hit?

That was another thing he’d learned though since coming to the Crewman Quarter: there was no accounting for stupidity.

He’d thought Macquarie seemed smarter than that, but he was looking at the evidence of it now, scrawled across the wall in long exultant flourishes like _Remembrance_ , printed in tiny letters that were cramped with effort like _One fine day_ , or in the shaking, palsied hand of drug withdrawal: _Betrayal._

It seemed a shame. He must have been clever once, clever enough to spell even the long words which was more than he could say for most of the inhabitants of the Quarter, but still not clever enough to say no to that first hit.

His choice, and Sacha wouldn’t lose any sleep over it in the end. It gave him pause to wonder, but that was all.

“He can’t have been too hard up,” Sacha said at last, falling back onto the practicalities. “He’s got a gridscreen.”

 _“Hmm,”_ said Grantly, still copying Macquarie’s madness into his notebook faithfully.

Sacha wondered what Traveller Macquarie had to do to earn a gridscreen, and whether or not he thought it was worth it. He supposed he’d needed something to watch to fill the hours when he wasn’t high.

Sacha crouched down on his haunches to inspect the screen. It would have been easier to kneel, but the floor was filthy. He noticed that the screen wasn’t bolted to the wall, but hanging instead on a pair of uneven brackets. The wall was scratched around the brackets. The screen had been moved a lot.

Sacha carefully lifted the gridscreen down and leaned it against the wall.

 _Daniel Marsden,_ the wall told him.

There was a cavity in the wall where the connecting cables for the gridscreen snaked into the darkness. Sacha took out a pair of blue latex gloves from the pouch on his belt and pulled them on. Then he unhooked his torch and shone the beam into the cavity. There, nestled in amongst the cables, was a collection of vials and a capped syringe.

Sacha withdrew the vials carefully and laid them on the stained and sticky carpet. There were five of them in total, most containing at least a few millilitres of liquid. Sacha inspected the syringe. It looked clean and unused. He laid it beside the vials of Agex.

There was something else in the wall cavity as well, and Sacha drew it out carefully. It was a piece of paper. It was stained and faded and grimy, and Sacha could only just make out the words. In the same shaking hand that had written all of Traveller Macquarie’s delusions over the walls he read: _Look her in the eye when you do it._

“Sir,” he said, and stood up. His legs ached from crouching for so long.

He passed the scrap of paper to LEO Grantly, and he inspected it thoughtfully. He glanced at the message, the vials of Agex on the floor, and frowned slightly. 

“Suicide,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Sacha asked.

Sacha picked up a tiny vial of Agex and held it carefully under his nose. He smelled sewage still, and rotten food, but underneath all that there was just a faint acrid hint of something chemical. It reminded him of drain cleaner, and he wondered why in the world someone would want to put it in their blood. Addiction he almost understood, but why that first hit?

He knew it was a question with no adequate answer.

He placed the vial back on the floor, and looked up at LEO Grantly.

“Read that and tell me it’s not a suicide note,” said Grantly, and sighed and shook his head.

Did he oppose the idea of suicide on ethical grounds, Sacha wondered, or just in Traveller Macquarie’s case? Like Macquarie, Sacha believed it was possible to decide on suicide by using a rational process of thought. Sacha couldn’t believe Macquarie had a rational bone left in his body, but his only regret as he looked around the squat was that he hadn’t gone through with it and saved him a lot of trouble.

What was it that Jason had told him? He’d love to give a seminar called _Suicide: Getting It Right The First Time._ Sacha had been an LEO long enough to laugh at that. Like all of them he was tired of picking up the pieces of worthless lives. It didn’t matter how long you talked to that woman whose old man had touched her up, who could hardly speak because her jaw was busted; she never showed up in court to press charges. It didn’t matter if you scared those kids onto the straight and narrow; tomorrow they were back thieving. It didn’t matter if you talked someone down; they said they had nothing to live for, and they were right.

Grantly tucked the scrap of paper into his shirt pocket. His fingers lingered for a moment over his pocket, and Sacha saw the regret in his face.

He envied him that.

Sacha Harper had only been in the Crewman Quarter for four months, and he was already jaded. He tried to steer himself back towards compassion, but it was hard. He aspired to be like Chris Weber. He was a realist, and Sacha liked that, but he wasn’t callous. Twenty years from now Weber might take Grantly’s place; patient, hard working, and patrolling the Crewman Quarter with the gently cynical eye of a man who knows he can’t change the world, but can at least take a moment to crouch down and manoeuvre the drunks and the junkies into the recovery position.

Sacha wanted to be like them, Grantly and  Weber, but he worried that it was easier not to be in the end. Sometimes people just disgusted him. Sometimes he hated them. Four months in, and he’d already lost most of his compassion.

He remembered that other joke he’d heard about what it meant when a woman had two black eyes. It meant her husband had to tell her twice. He’d laughed at that as well, and hated himself a bit for doing it. He felt sorry for the kids who had to grow up in those homes, and it was no surprise they turned out they way they did.

Once, on the Blue Stairs, a kid no more than eight had called him an LEO cunt. He’d been too surprised to be offended. Sacha hadn’t even known the word until he was thirteen, and hadn’t used if before coming to the Crewman Quarter. He couldn’t believe that little kids used it.

He saw the word again now, on Macquarie’s wall. It no longer shocked him. He’d heard it too often and it had lost all its power.

Sacha stole a look at LEO Grantly and wondered again what Davey Macquarie meant to him. There were a hundred worthless junkies in the Crewman Quarter. Sacha couldn’t see why Macquarie was so special.

Sacha thought back to when he’d last seen him in the cells. He’d seemed almost human then. Sacha had watched him sleep and wondered about him. And, afterwards when he’d showered, he’d thought what a pity it was that he’d come to this. But whatever sympathy he might have felt he’d lost the second Macquarie had bolted, because when it came down to it he was an LEO and he was a junkie, and he had no right to destroy Sacha’s life like this.

Grantly began to hum to himself softly as he copied down the words from the wall into his notebook. Sacha thought it was something classical, maybe from an opera, but he couldn’t be sure.

Sacha remembered what Grantly had said on their walk down the Blue Stairs. Did Macquarie _like_ him? He’d never given him any reason to, but he’d told him that silly joke when he’d been in his cell: _For starters, your finger’s broken._

He’d laughed and thought he’d seen something else in him, something underneath. Some potential, some spark, maybe a small part of whatever it was that Grantly saw, enough that he didn’t hate him for what he was, but he’d ruined it all with his escape.

Given half a chance now, Sacha Harper truly believed he’d shoot Macquarie.

 


	15. Chapter 15

Traveller Macquarie was as insubstantial as a ghost, Sacha thought in the days following the escape. He’d vanished into the walls like one and hadn’t left a trace behind. And nobody in the Crewman Quarter remembered him, even in Railroad’s where he’d spent almost every night. Only the cleaning woman whose abusive partner had been arrested by the LEOs once or twice admitted to having seen him there at all, but not since his last arrest, and she didn’t know where he lived but she would let them know, she said doubtfully, if he showed his face again.

Sacha thanked her, but he knew it was pointless. Macquarie was probably halfway across the world by now, getting high in some other stinking bar.

The barman was worse than useless.

“Get all types in here, officer,” he said when Sacha asked him.

“David Macquarie,” Sacha said. “Caucasian, twenty, thin build, blond hair. An addict.”

The barman only shrugged, and turned his back on him.

Sacha sighed, and looked around the place. There was a man sitting at a booth drinking shots of whisky from a bottle. He was middle-aged, with thinning lank hair. Sacha recognised him as one of the regulars, although he didn’t know his name.

He glanced across at Chris  Weber. He was speaking with old Frenchy, over by the jukebox.

Sacha crossed to the booth. “Excuse me, Traveller.”

The man looked at him. His eyes shone like black onyx in the gloom.

“My name is LEO Harper,” Sacha said. “I’m looking for David Macquarie. He was a regular here. Do you know him?”

The man shook his head. “The name’s not familiar, officer.”

Sacha knew he was lying, just like they all were. He remembered what Grantly had said about Macquarie, and it was true of everyone in Railroad’s and at least half the population of the Crewman Quarter: _He wouldn’t admit to having ten fingers and toes unless he knew you could prove it first._

“David Macquarie,” he said again patiently. “Caucasian, twenty, thin build, blond hair. An addict.”

The man poured himself another shot. “I don’t have nothing to do with junkies, officer. You lot oughta do something about them.”

Sacha tried not to grimace at his hypocrisy. The flowering of veins across the pallid skin of his cheeks and the fact he was drinking shots at nine in the morning told Sacha he was no stranger to addiction himself.

“Thank you for your time, Traveller.”

The man nodded at him, and downed his shot of whisky.

Sacha crossed back over to Chris, and stood beside him while he patiently listened to one of old Frenchy’s famous rants.

“And youse,” Frenchy snarled, spittle flecking his grey whiskers, “and youse do _nothink_ , you fuckin’ dogs! Nothink!”

Chris raised his eyebrows. “Do you know him or not, Frenchy?”

Frenchy growled at him. “You fuckin’ LEO cunts!”

“Settle down, Frenchy,” Chris said firmly, “or I’ll do you for disturbing the peace.”

 _“Yah!”_ Frenchy said, and spat on the floor.

“Do you know Traveller Macquarie or not?” Chris asked again patiently.

Sacha didn’t catch what Frenchy said, only the obscenities.

He leered at them both and muttered.

Sacha glanced at Chris, and recognised the signs. Chris’s hand was resting on his utility belt as he listened, on top of his canister of capsicum spray. He had flicked the pouch open with his thumb. He hadn’t stepped back, but he had widened his stance. He was ready for trouble.

“Traveller Macquarie, Frenchy,” said Chris firmly. “ _David_ Macquarie. Do you know him?”

“Know youse lost him!” Frenchy said, and barked with laughter. “Everyone knows that, eh?”

“Yeah,” Chris said patiently. “And now we’re looking for him. Have you seen him, Frenchy?”

Frenchy drank the dregs of his beer from the bottle, and then slurred plaintively: “How come youse never do nothink? _Cunts._ ”

Chris clamped his jaw shut and narrowed his eyes. 

Sacha glanced around Railroad’s. The cleaning woman had cleared off out the back somewhere, leaving only the barman and the man in the booth. The closest backup, Sacha knew, were Jason and Linda who were canvassing the flats two levels up the Blue Stairs. Still, he told himself, Frenchy was a scrawny sixty-year alcoholic who couldn’t even stand up straight.

“Fuckin’ Consulate,” mumbled Frenchy. His bleary eyes stared at them forlornly.

“Yeah,” said Chris, sighing. “Okay.”

Frenchy showed his gums in a grimace. “And you lot, always botherin’ me even though I never bothered no-one. How come youse never do nothink?”

“Why do we do nothing about what, Frenchy?” Chris asked evenly.

 _“About what?”_ Frenchy yelled suddenly, shaking with fury. “ _About_ fucking _what?_ About all them fuckers whose always having a go at old Frenchy, that’s about what, you _cunt!”_

“I warned you,” Chris said, and took a step towards him.

Sacha heard the sound of glass smashing even as he moved forward with Chris.

 _“Chris!”_ he shouted.

Frenchy lunged with his broken bottle, and Chris leapt back quickly. He was on his back foot, suddenly off balance. His boot caught in a hole in the carpet, he tripped, and Frenchy dived towards him.

Sacha grabbed the old drunk’s arm, pulling him off balance. He tried to force Frenchy back. For a man of his age and wretched condition he was surprisingly strong. Sacha saw the grubby old fist of his free hand in his line of vision suddenly, but couldn’t let go while he was still wielding the broken bottle.

He saw white when his fist connected with the bridge of his nose, a great flash of white, and then he was on the floor. He couldn’t see a thing, but he still had hold of him. He was on top of him, and he _stank_ , and he realised he was tugging at something on his belt.

Adrenalin coursed through him and he tasted blood in the back of his throat.

He heard Chris gasping into his radio: “Urgent assistance at Railroad’s! Urgent!”

Sacha let go of Frenchy’s arm, and brought his knee up sharply. He didn’t care what he hit: kidneys, stomach, groin. He just wanted to hurt Frenchy long enough to get him off him.

Sacha reached for his firearm with his free hand. He couldn’t risk drawing it, but he had to keep the holster covered. Nothing else on his belt was immediately fatal.

There was blood in Sacha’s eyes, and he couldn’t see, but he felt his bony hands around his throat. He was trying to choke him. All the while he spat his invective: _Cunt! Dog! Cunt!_

 _I’m going to be a statistic on the broadcasts,_ Sacha thought wildly, struggling against him. 

Suddenly there was more weight on him and his breath was knocked out of him. He blinked his eyes to try and see, but just caught a blur of blue. A moment later he could breathe again, and the sound of old Frenchy’s wailing filled the air.

“Stay down!” Chris shouted. _“I said fucking_ stay _down!”_

Sacha tried to sit up, and that was when the pain hit. He put the heel of his hand to his nose and fought against the dizziness. His vision cleared slightly, and he saw that Frenchy was face down on the floor, with Chris kneeling on his back.

The old drunk was still fighting.

Sacha, looking at his bloody hand in astonishment, crawled across the carpet and knelt on the old man’s flailing legs. His whole head hurt, and he thought was going to cry any minute now, and he was shocked. Three minutes ago he’d been standing there. He didn’t know now exactly what had happened, or how it had happened so quickly. 

Their backup arrived, and Sacha relinquished his grip on old Frenchy’s thrashing legs. He leaned back against the jukebox, tilting his head up. All he could taste was blood. He realised he was shaking.

A moment later Jason Tam was crouching beside him, holding a dressing against his nose even thought it hurt like hell. “Sacha, you okay?”

“Fuck,” said Sacha, and started to cry. 

“Hey,” he said, and wiped the hair away from his forehead with his free hand. “You’ll be okay.”   

Sacha struggled for breath, forcing his tears down, and watched with grim satisfaction as Chris and Linda hauled old Frenchy off the floor. He was wailing now, the victim again. Chris had an elbow around his scrawny whiskered throat, and Sacha saw him tense his arm with careful deliberation: old Frenchy dropped back to the floor of Railroad’s like a sack of spuds. Linda cuffed his wrists behind his back while he was out and drove her boot into his ribs when she had the chance.

Everyone else had arrived by then, including the boss, and even Karl and the dog. As Sacha was attended to by Jason and the boss he heard the customer in the booth giving his details to Fitzie.

“Leshenko,” he was saying in a patient tone, “Traveller Leshenko.”

Sacha tried to stand up, but Jason held him down.

“Sit there,” he said. “Stay there, Sacha.”  

Sacha’s head was spinning, and it felt like it had been split open. It hurt like nothing else. He wanted to cry again, but not in Railroad’s, and not in front of everyone he worked with. He learned his head back against the jukebox. His whole face was throbbing with pain and he could taste the blood in the back of his throat.

The next thing he knew Doctor Bahis was kneeling beside him and talking to him in a gentle tone.

“It’s broken,” she said. “Hold out your arm please, Sacha.”

As the needle slid into his arm, Sacha wondered if junkies even felt that awful initial sting anymore, or if it was nothing more to them but the bite of anticipation.

It was an anaesthetic. It flooded into Sacha’s bloodstream and gradually the throbbing pain in his head slipped away and left nothing but fuzziness. He remembered the pain when Doctor Bahis prodded carefully at his nose, but only in tiny flashes. He discovered just a tiny kinship in that moment for all the junkies in the world.

Even now, he reminded himself, he was thinking of Macquarie. He was like a disease, and Sacha hated him for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

Stuck on light duties after the assault Sacha caught up on his paperwork, worked through his training modules and, one evening shift with nothing else to do, started to clear out the filing cabinets in the old store room. It was a task that nobody else wanted, and he was left in peace most of the time. The store room smelled of dust and time, and some of the reports Sacha came across dated back thirty years. They were faded now, and mostly illegible. Sacha tried to decipher the first few and then gave up on them. He put them to one side for LEO Grantly to check. He didn’t want to throw anything out that might be needed still.

He went through the folders of Standard Operating Procedures, removing the outdated pages and replacing them with the ones that had just been stacked on top of the cabinet as they arrived in their yellow envelopes from the Consulate. Some of the envelopes hadn’t even been opened.

He discovered rosters that dated back a decade, pads of crime report forms that weren’t used anymore, and training manuals so old they had started to disintegrate. One page detached and floated free. It was just a single printed page, brittle with age and mistreatment, and it caught Sacha’s attention for a moment:

_12.6 That all holding cells be fitted with CCTV._

_12.7_ Detainee Observations:

_12.7A That all detainees receive no less than hourly obs._

_12.7B That those detainees determined by an authorised CMO to be at high risk receive obs no greater than ten minutes apart._

_12.7C That those detainees determined by an authorised CMO to be at high risk receive immediate psychological assessment._

He tossed it in the bin.

Sacha listened to his radio as he worked, keeping an ear out for the rest of the crews. It was a Friday night, typically busy, and B-Shift and D-Shift were working together. There was a fight in Railroad’s that was all over by the time the crews arrived. There was a domestic in a flat near the shopping mall, a stabbing in the entertainment hub, and a group of drunken youths whose progression up the Blue Stairs could be tracked by the smashed lights and windows they left in their wake.

Sacha smiled when he heard Karl’s voice: “I’ve let the dog off and they’ve scattered like roaches. Chris, Linda, if youse want to head to the back of the medical centre there’s a couple hiding in the bins there.”

Friday night in the old Crewman Quarter.

Sacha dumped a stack of mouldering papers on the floor. He wished he was out there.

It had been a week and a half since his assault, and the worst was over.

The morning afterwards had been the worst, when the bruising had come out. Sacha had looked at his reflection in the shower room mirror at the barracks and remembered that joke he’d laughed at: two black eyes, so a man had to tell him twice. Underneath the tape that was crossed over the bridge of his nose the skin had been black. It had hurt and itched all night, and a corner of the tape had worked free and his eyelashes had got caught in it. Worst of all, something had squeaked when he breathed. His nose hurt to touch, so he hadn’t pressed it too hard. It felt strangely pliant, like liquid under the skin. Things grated there that shouldn’t.

That hadn’t lasted, thankfully.

It had hurt to breathe, hurt to talk, hurt to smile, and Sacha hated it. Doctor Bahis had offered him two weeks off work, but Sacha had refused. He was four months into his probationary period, and not prepared to take extended sick leave this early in. Not when he could at least sit behind a gridscreen and type up reports. He’d made enough mistakes already. He didn’t need to get a reputation as a slacker. And he wanted to be there when the LEOs caught up with Traveller Macquarie. It might not have been directly his fault that Sacha had had his nose broken, but Sacha thought he was at least entitled to the satisfaction of seeing him in a cell again.

In the end, he was disappointed.

Two weeks after Sacha Harper was assaulted in by old Frenchy, Grantly closed the investigation into David Macquarie’s escape. Sacha, who had been expecting the sky to fall if he wasn’t found, had felt a curious mixture of regret and relief when he’d been told, and then wondered if the boss was being too lenient on Macquarie. It wouldn’t be the first time.

It wasn’t that, Chris told him later. The order had come from Control, filtered down via the chain of command to Grantly’s cramped office, but where it had come from initially nobody knew. Sacha wondered if it had anything to do with the Journeymen, given that one of them had turned up in the station asking about Traveller Macquarie, but it was only conjecture. He didn’t know. The boss probably didn’t even know, and nobody dared press him.

“Where’s the order from, boss?” Karl had asked when Grantly had told them first that afternoon in the dayroom at shift changeover.

“From Control, Fallon,” Grantly had said curtly.

Linda raised her eyebrows. “Is it political, boss?”

Grantly only shrugged, and that was an end to it.

Hours later, back in the barracks after their shift, they relaxed over a game of pool and speculated. It was late, and most of the others had gone to bed. Only Sacha, Chris, Linda and Jason were still up, drinking and talking. Linda and Jason were on a day off the next day, and Sacha and Chris were on an afternoon start. All the same they hadn’t intended it to be a late night, but it was past midnight already and nobody was tired yet.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Jason as he lined up his shot. He squinted down the length of the cue. “It’s the Daly Commission.”

He missed, and swore.

Linda put her beer down on the worn edge of the table as he handed her the cue. “It _has_ to be.”

Sacha, wiping chalk on his shirt, looked up. The name was familiar. “What was that one about again?”

“Oh, newbie!” said Linda. “Don’t they teach you anything at the academy?”

Sacha would have screwed up his face, but he was still too sore for that so he stuck out his tongue instead.   

Chris wandered out from inside and pressed a beer into Sacha’s hands.

“What’s the Daly Commission?” Sacha asked him.

Jason looked away.

“The Daly Commission,” Chris said. “Deaths in custody. That was because of here.”

“Oh,” said Sacha. He discovered now that he remembered it vaguely from his time at the academy, or at least its more basic recommendations: hourly checks of prisoners and security cameras in every cell. It hadn’t translated far into the real world. The security station in the Crewman Quarter only had one cell with a camera, and hourly checks on a busy Friday night? That was a fantasy.

“So,” announced Linda, leaning over the pool table, “it’s Macquarie.”

Sacha twisted the top off his beer and flicked it towards the bin. “What’s he got to do with it?”

Chris sighed. “It’s _Macquarie_. You weren’t to know. It was about three years ago and a lot’s changed. There’s not a single LEO here now who was there then, except for the boss. Macquarie was in custody that night, and saw it all happen.”

Sacha’s breath caught in his throat as it fell into place for him. “He testified at the Daly Commission?”

“No,” said  Weber, shaking his head. “It was Grantly who testified. He hung the lot of them out to dry.”

Sacha looked at the others uncomfortably.

“Not that they didn’t deserve it,” Chris said meditatively.

“Yeah,” said Jason. “Still, you know.”

Linda nodded.

Chris took a swig of beer. “Anyhow, they jailed some of them, sacked some of them, and transferred everyone else out.”

“So now Macquarie has a get out of jail free card?” Sacha asked quietly.

 Weber shrugged. “He has a lot of latitude. I don’t know how far it goes.”

Sacha wished he hadn’t asked. He felt like the discussion had sucked all the fun out of the evening. It was easy to pretend that the bad old days were long gone, but it had only been four years. Sacha had never peeled off the sticker on his locker door, and he wondered now whose name he would find underneath. It wasn’t ancient history at all, however much the world had changed.

But it was in the open now, and je wanted to know.

“So, _um,_ how come they killed the guy?” Sacha asked quietly.

“They reckoned he was a terrorist,” said Chris. He sighed. “They reckoned he was working for Solomon Day.”

Sacha raised his eyebrows. “Solomon Day? What’s Macquarie got to do with that?”

“They were arrested together, the guy and him,” said Chris. “He was lucky they didn’t kill him as well. Suppose they couldn’t bring themselves to kill a kid, whatever they thought he was.”

Sacha thought of Macquarie, and his flash-in-the-pan smile. He couldn’t imagine him as a kid.

“Was he a terrorist?” he asked. “The man they killed?”

“Dunno,” said Chris. He took another swig of beer. “Hope so.”

Sacha smiled abstractedly at his pragmatism.

Three years ago the LEOs in the Crewman Quarter had committed murder, but it was too easy to understand where they were coming from. Whether understanding equated to culpability, Sacha didn’t know and neither did the others.

He remembered the Solomon Day’s campaign of terror though, he remembered the fear. He remembered feeling that the world was so fragile, so vulnerable, and he remembered feeling angry as well. Who was Solomon Day to think he had to right to destroy _his_ life? Those LEOs back in the day must have thought the same thing, the only difference being that they had a target.

He understood his own discomfort then, and that of the others: Maybe, in that time, they would have done the same thing. Terrorists didn’t deserve the legal protection of the society that they tried to overthrow.

And everybody crossed the line at some point, in some way. It didn’t always end like that, but maybe it had the potential. Those LEOs back in the day would have been like them once, drinking beers after a long day, having a few laughs, and possibly even playing pool around the same old table. 

Sacha shivered.

“It’s different rules here,” Chris told him in a low voice, and then frowned as he heard his own words. “No, not different rules. The rules are the same, but here they get _applied_ differently.”

Sacha, nursing his beer, thought: _He means the rules get bent here, or broken._

“The whole world’s different down here,” Chris said in a meditative tone. “They forget that, up at the Consulate. What works up there down here just doesn’t. The Crewman Quarter, most of it at least, is dysfunctional. Nobody has a job, nobody pays taxes, nobody pays rent, nobody goes to school. My fiancée is a teacher. They’ve got three hundred kids on the roll at the school, and only sixty ever turn up and those are all the government workers’ kids.” He smiled slightly. “Best resourced school in the world.”

“Why’s that?” Sacha asked curiously.

“Because they budget according to the number of school aged kids in the Quarter,” Chris said. “It’s the same reason we’re under-resourced. It works out to basically one security officer to every two hundred people. In most places that’s enough. Down here we’re fighting a losing battle. And up there, they just don’t _understand_.”

Sacha hardly understood it himself, and he saw it firsthand. People here got drunk, got into fights, got high, and that was it. That was what they did with their days. He thought of the levels above Railroad’s, where the Quarter worked to rules he understood. All those government positions, all those jobs held by government officials or their immediate families. The Consulate had created their own infrastructure, their own economy, their own society, and the people who were born, lived and died in the Quarter didn’t fit into it. 

Up in the real world they didn’t understand the Crewman Quarter, they still didn’t understand that it didn’t _work_ , just like they didn’t understand why those LEOs had done what they did three years ago. Sacha thought he almost could. 

Linda potted the eight ball with a sharp crack that echoed through the rec room and brought Sacha back out of his reverie.   

Jason Tam smiled at him suddenly. “Okay, bruiser, you playing?”

Sacha narrowed his eyes at him, glad for the distraction. “That is _not_ going to be my nickname!”

He showed him his palms. “Easy!”

Sacha laughed at him, and reached for the pool cue.


	16. Chapter 16

Sacha was still awake when he heard the ventilation system hiss to a stop. He looked over at the clock on the bedside table: midnight. For a moment he felt the quiet stillness, the sudden lack of cool air blowing gently down onto his skin, and then the auxiliary power kicked in and the system groaned back into life. As a child he’d hated switchover, which at home occurred at ten o’clock every night, and had kept his head over his pillow so he didn’t have to listen to it. He’d always been afraid that one night he wouldn’t hear it come back on, and wondered how long it would take to suffocate. There was no reason to be afraid, he knew now; it was only the anticipation, and his childish mind searching for something to fear.

Sacha gave up trying to sleep in the end, and reached over to turn the light on.

Jason Tam mumbled into the pillow.

“Go back to sleep, Jase,” he whispered, and took a moment to study the line of his naked back and the way the light shone on his skin. He liked to watch Jason sleep.

He turned the light out again, and thought back to his patrol earlier. He and Chris had been sent to the old Observation Deck. They had climbed the stairs, sent the junkies packing, and paused to drink in the view.

The stars were brilliant. Sacha had never seen them more clearly from anywhere else, and thought that it almost made the Crewman Quarter worthwhile.

“They put the decks in,” Chris said, “so they didn’t go stir-crazy in the early days. People adapted, I s’pose, because hardly anyone comes here anymore. No-one but the junkies, anyway.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Sacha, his eyes open wide to catch every glimmer of starlight. He held his breath, and heard his heartbeat. He thought of the Navigator then, and his solitary existence at the top of the world, his eyes always fixed on the shifting heavens. The beauty, he thought, must compensate for the loneliness.

In all his moments of reverie, Sacha’s thoughts drifted to Davey Macquarie.

“When he was arrested for drunk that time the boss let him go,” Sacha had asked, “what was he like?”

“Still high,” Chris answered, unsurprised by the question and immediately knowing who it was about. “I don’t know on what. He was all over the place.”

Sacha had seen something cross his face in the darkness. “What?”

Chris had shrugged it off, discomforted. “No, it was nothing really. He was just spewing all that usual crap, the sort that junkies do, he was down on the floor at that point, and he said, _I’ve seen the empty places_. _Everything decays._ ” He had smiled at Sacha’s face. “I don’t remember it all. It was creepy though. It was the tone of his voice, the way he said it. I almost believed it. I know the boss does.”

His serious eyes had sought out the stars.

“Yeah, he thinks there’s something there,” Sacha had said.

Chris had shrugged again. “They’ve got history.”

 _Now we all do,_ Sacha had thought.

“Do you think he was really in the Rats’ Nest?” Sacha had asked Chris.

“Dunno,” he had answered, and Sacha could see that he’d thought about it as well.

The stars wheeled and turned, and Sacha had held his arms across his chest. He was cold.

“Here’s to looking outward,” Chris had murmured. 

Then they’d got the call for a stabbing out the front of Level Six fire control, and Sacha had pushed the view from his mind as they’d jogged back up the Blue Stairs.

He could have stood there for hours if that call hadn’t come.

The air hissed quietly through the ventilation shafts and Sacha looked up at the dark ceiling.  He’d only finished work at ten, and wasn’t tired yet. He’d been kidding himself to think he could sleep.

Sacha climbed out of Jason’s bed and pulled on his clothes in the darkness.

“Where you goin’?” Jason murmured in the darkness.

“Back to my room.”

“Okay.”

Sacha wasn’t even sure he’d been awake.

He let himself out and headed down the passageway back towards his own room. Someone was in the showers; steam was escaping like smoke from under the door. The hallway was clammy with it.

Sacha wondered if a hot shower would relax him enough to sleep, and doubted it.

There was a movie on the grid in the rec room, but Sacha wasn’t interested.

It struck him that where he really wanted to be was at work, catching up on those few outstanding files he had before his next rostered shift. There were things he could manage without Chris, and Linda was on the counter tonight and wouldn’t mind helping if he got stuck. He wanted to be busy.

In his own room he turned on the light and looked around. The small space, which only a few months ago had seemed stark and impersonal, felt more and more like home every day. He had photos of his new friends from the barracks taped to the headboard of the bed, and the _Get Well Soon_ cards he had received after the assault propped up on the shelves. There was a bottle of wine on the nightstand with a ribbon tied around it, waiting for an occasion, beside a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses that Linda had loaned him when he’d been paranoid about his bruising. Sacha was cautiously at home here now, and cautiously happy. Davey Macquarie, more specifically the legacy of his escape, was his only insecurity.

Sacha knew exactly what was keeping him from sleeping.

He changed into jeans and a shirt, and left a note on his bed in case Jason came looking: _Gone into work. See you later._ Jason thought he was too conscientious, but it was alright for him; he had five years of service behind him and knew his way around a court brief backwards. When he was where Jason was, Sacha told himself, he could afford to relax a bit.

It was past midnight on a Monday night, and the Quarter was quiet. Below Railroad’s, Sacha knew from experience, the junkies and the prostitutes and the pushers would be in full swing, but they never noticed the passage of days. The street the barracks was in, three levels above the station and surrounded by government workers’ places, was dead.

Sacha followed the street to the Blue Stairs, and headed down. 

The strip lighting was unbroken up here, and the Stairs were wide and empty, but Sacha was cautious. He was on the Blue Stairs, alone, in the old Crewman Quarter. He walked steadily, and kept his eyes fixed on his route.

The Stairs turned slightly as they descended, and Sacha kept to the left of them to extend his field of vision as far as possible.

There was a man sleeping on the Stairs, curled up in his jacket. Sacha guessed he was a junkie, because he was skinny and filthy enough and he didn’t smell of alcohol. He didn’t move as Sasha passed.

Sacha thought again of Macquarie, and wondered if he’d been inevitable, or if there had ever been a time in his life when he’d had even half a chance. He remembered what Grantly had told him: he was first arrested when he was eight years old, and first sent to detention when he was eleven.  He’d had no sort of chance at all.  

The security station was just off the Blue Stairs. It was always open, but at night it took on a different atmosphere that still felt curious to Sacha; a secret life, like an office block with the lights off, or a school empty of children. At night most of the lights were turned down at the security station, the grill was locked in front of the counter, and it was quiet except for the occasional rowdy prisoner in the cells. During the day, over the noise of conversation, of whirring printers, of telephones and the grid, Sacha rarely heard the prisoners. At night their howls of abuse travelled further, and were carried all the way throughout the station.

“Hey, Sacha, what’s up?” Linda asked from behind the grill. She looked tired.

“I’ve just got a few things to catch up on,” Sacha told her, and Linda opened the door to let him through. “Thanks.”

The dayroom was empty; the LEOs were out patrolling. Sacha checked the scanner that sat on the desk closest to the counter. The volume was up, but he didn’t hear anything. It was a quiet night in the old Crewman Quarter.

Sacha sat at his desk, and turned on the gridscreen. It flickered for a moment.

Sacha checked his tasks. He had two court briefs outstanding, but wasn’t confident enough to tackle them on his own. He was worried he’d make a dog’s breakfast of them if Chris wasn’t watching over his shoulder. 

He had an interview transcript outstanding as well, and retrieved the disc from the cabinet in the dayroom. He took it back to his desk, put it in the recorder and pressed play, and began to type.

It had been a quick interview, the standard questions followed by the standard denials, and Sacha had finished typing it up in less than an hour. He was watching the disc again and checking the transcript for mistakes when the boss came in.

“Sacha,” he said, raising his brows. “You’re not on overtime, are you?”

“No, boss,” Sacha assured him. “I’m in my own time.”

“Don’t be here too long,” he said. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Not really,” he said. He wasn’t in uniform either.

LEO Grantly smiled at that, and continued on down the hall to his office. Sacha heard his door click shut.

At one-thirty Sacha made himself a coffee, and one for Linda as well.

“Thanks, Sacha,” said Linda. She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand and sighed. “Jesus, tonight is just _dragging.”_

“Nobody interesting?” Sacha asked, nodding towards the cells.

“A drunk who’s sleeping it off, and a bloke who tried to break into the rations depot,” said Linda. “Both as quiet as mice. Have you finished your transcript?”

“Yeah,” said Sacha.

“Don’t forget the boss has to sign off on it,” Linda told him.

Sacha had forgotten, and he shook his head, annoyed with himself. “Right.”

“Come and see me before you go,” Linda said. “Remember that book I was telling you about? It’s in my locker.”

“Okay,” said Sacha. “Thanks.”

He collected the disc and the transcript from his desk, remembering to cross-reference them on the reports tab on the grid. He returned the disc to the cabinet, and headed towards Grantly’s office with the transcript.

If the property didn’t kill him, Sacha thought, the paperwork would. It was so full of duplicates and checks and balances and seemingly pointless indexes that he thought he’d never figure it out.

Reaching Grantly’s office, Sacha felt his breath catch in his throat as he heard the familiar tones of Davey Macquarie’s voice. For a moment he didn’t understand how it was possible—how had Linda forgotten to mention _him?_ —and then he heard the words: _I asked him back at Railroad’s, but he didn’t say._

It was a recording of his interview.

The amusement in Macquarie’s voice still made him frown. He hadn’t forgotten the sense of outrage he’d felt during the interview, and the events that followed had only made it worse. Sacha still resented him. Most of all he resented the way he couldn’t forget him. He was just as wretched as any other Crewman Quarter junkie, just as filthy, just as abject, but there was something else there as well, and it held him against all his better judgement.

Chris was the same. _I almost believed it._  

And Grantly, who’d told them the investigation was closed, was sitting in his office in the middle of the night watching that recording.

Sacha wasn’t the only one who let Macquarie haunt him.

 He drew a breath and knocked on the door.

“LEO Harper,” said Grantly when he opened it, “I thought I told you to go home.”

“Um,” said Sacha, still too new to tell if it was really a reprimand, “I was just finishing up a few things, sir.”

He smiled slightly, and Sacha relaxed.

Grantly looked at his watch. “Don’t let the job rule your life, Sacha,” he told him, and Sacha was struck by the sincerity in his voice.

“No,” he said. “I won’t, boss. I’ve just got a transcript here to get signed off.”

He followed Grantly into his office, and stood in front of his desk while he sat and flicked through the pages.

Sacha’s eye was caught by the footage on his gridscreen: Macquarie, wearing a wry smile just before Grantly had stopped the interview. The tilt of his head like he was listening to something else, his scruffy hair, and his green eyes half-closed against the light.

He looked away from the screen quickly when the boss began to speak.

“And this is a true transcript of a recorded interview?” he asked. “To the best of your ability?”

“Yes, sir,” Sacha said, hoping there were no obvious typos. 

He took his pen and signed, and then leaned back in his chair. “So how are you finding it all, Sacha?” he asked.

Sacha picked up the transcript and thought about the question a fraction too long to lie. He flushed. “Overwhelming, sir.”

He smiled at that. “It gets better.”

Sacha’s gaze flicked back to the gridscreen and he wondered how that could even be true in Grantly’s case.

“So everyone tells me,” he said at last.

Sacha could see the amusement gleaming in Macquarie’s half-closed eyes, and the faintest trace of a smile in the corners of his mouth. How could he smile like that, in the face of what he was?

Grantly followed his gaze.

“I thought the investigation was closed, sir,” Sacha said boldly.

“It is,” replied Grantly.

Sacha lingered for a moment. He frowned. “Where do you think he’s gone, sir?”

LEO Grantly only glanced at the gridscreen. “I don’t know, Harper.”

Sacha looked at him worriedly.

Grantly sighed. “Go home, Sacha.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Sacha closed the door behind him. After a moment he heard that familiar voice again, amused, teasing, laughing at him like he was the only one that got the joke: _How do you feel it’s going?_

Was the boss going to sit there all night and watch it?

Sacha shook it off his unease and walked away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was four-thirty in the morning when he heard the knocking at the door, and Sacha hadn’t slept well. It seemed colder than usual, and he wondered if there had been a problem with the ventilation system during the switchover. Things were always going wrong in the Crewman Quarter. Yesterday it had been the grid connection, which was almost a weekly occurrence. If it had happened somewhere else in the world somebody would have screamed terrorism, but down here it was just as likely to be a network failure. The whole Quarter was in the shit, Jason had told him, and had been for as long as anybody could remember.

“How come they never fix anything?” Sacha had grizzled to Chris earlier that night after work, his hand stuck into the wall cavity in the rec room searching for the grid screen cables that had dropped out _again._

“They can’t,” Chris had said. “There aren’t any parts. That was it. That’s what he said. _There are no fields for resowing. Everything decays_.”

It was one of those nights when Sacha just couldn’t settle. 

He’d risen from bed once to get his spare blanket down from the top of his locker, and again to put on a pair of socks. After putting them on he was comfortable for a few minutes, and then it was too hot. Sometimes he felt like he was close to drifting off to sleep before an aching muscle, an itch, or a random thought pulled him sharply back from the brink.

He dozed off at last with the light still on.

He had drifted uneasily between wakefulness and sleep, on and off, and had dreamed briefly that was on the old Observation Deck again, surrounded by stars. He’d heard someone laughing at him, but when he’d turned around to try and see who it was he’d only seen the stars. And then all of a sudden he was back in primary school, and his teacher was telling the class that looking at the stars was the same thing as looking back in time. Sacha hadn’t understood it then, and didn’t now, and in his dream the teacher started laughing at him as well.

 _Here’s to looking outward,_ people said, and should have said instead: _Here’s to looking backward._

Sacha had dreamed that he pressed his ear to the wall of the classroom and heard exquisite music.

When the knocking came it took a long moment to fall in place for Sacha: four-thirty a.m., Tuesday morning, and there was someone at the door. He thought he still heard the echo of imagined music. The dream was difficult to shake. 

Sacha assumed it would be Jason. He was starting at six, and might have been out of bed already. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d invited Sacha to join him in the showers at that hour either, before anyone else was awake and they had it to themselves. They told themselves they were a secret, but of course everyone knew.

Sacha climbed out of bed, crossed the floor in his bare feet, and pulled the door open. It was Chris Weber.

Sacha immediately thought he’d done something wrong, something that his field trainer had only just discovered, but it was ridiculous. Chris would have been in bed for hours.

“Were you up?” he asked. “I saw your light.”

Sacha shrugged, “It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” he said. “Do you want to get a beer?”

Sacha thought about his bed for a moment, but only a moment. “Yeah, okay.”

They headed downstairs to the rec room, and took a beer each from the fridge. They sat down at the long table under the dusty party lights and looked at one another with their scruffy hair, socks, and makeshift pyjamas.

“What the hell are we doing?” Chris asked Sacha with a sudden rueful grin. 

Sacha wrinkled his nose. “It was your idea!”

“Yeah, well,” he said, and held up his beer. “Here’s to the Navigator.”

“To looking outward,” Sacha answered automatically, and thought of his strange dream. The beer tasted too strong for the hour, but he swallowed it anyway. Maybe it would help him sleep. “How come you can’t sleep, Chris?”

“Just one of those nights,” he answered.

“I’m having a few of those lately.”

Just like on the old Observation Deck he didn’t have to ask. “Yeah.”

It would have been easier, Sacha thought, if only he had the clarity of vision of those LEOs three years ago and hated Davey Macquarie for what he was. He wondered why he felt any sense of responsibility for that, when three years ago he hadn’t even worn the uniform. Maybe he only wanted to see more in Macquarie because of that, because of what they’d done. And maybe it was own ego; no _normal_ junkie could escape from Sacha Harper. It was possible, in the end, that there really was nothing more to Davey Macquarie than met the eye.

But he knew he didn’t really believe that, and neither did Chris, and neither did Grantly. If he was deluding himself then at least he was in good company.

“Do you reckon he’ll ever come back?” he asked Chris.

He took another swig of his beer. “Maybe. He did once.”

“Yeah,” Sacha said. “We’ll get him next time, right?”

“Sure,” said Chris. “Course we will.”

Sacha caught his eye and they both laughed, because neither of them believed that either.  


	17. Chapter 17

It was a five hour trip from the Crewman Quarter to the Consulate, and Sacha had spent most of the trip sitting quietly in his seat and wondering what he was doing. Grantly sat beside him on the first train, and across from him on the second. The third, which took them on the short hop from Production to the Consulate, had been packed with commuters and they had both stood.

When they arrived at Central Station, Grantly had asked a man at the newsstand for directions while Sacha eyed the crowds with a mixture of anxiety and envy. It was such a relief to be back in civilisation after five and a half months in the Crewman Quarter, and dressed in civvies just like everyone else, but at the same time he couldn’t shake his unease.

The cafe was up the main steps to the street, and half a block down from the station. From the cafe they could see the main entrance to the Consulate, those massive wide steps that led up from the street and were traversed by an endless parade of men and women in suits. Security guards and LEOs wearing more body armour than Sacha had even seen patrolled the entrance.

Above the Consulate at the top of the world, although Sacha had never seen it, was the Atrium. He wondered if any of those bureaucrats and government officials ever felt it still: that almost supernatural chill at being so close to the Navigator.

All the affirmations he had learned as a child came back to him, and Sacha wondered if the Navigator ever spared a thought for the school children who dutifully invoked his name.

The man they met in the cafe was the same man Sacha had seen turn up at the security station the day Macquarie escaped. He was short, spry, and apparently a Journeyman. He didn’t look at all sinister to Sacha, and he wondered if that was all an act.

They took their seats, and a woman came over to take their order.

“Short black,” said Grantly, never taking his eyes off the small man.

“Cappuccino, please,” said Sacha, wondering if anyone in the place suspected what was happening here. Maybe they did, and maybe they were all Journeymen. That was the reputation they had.

Across the busy street, up the wide stairs into the heart of the Consulate were the Journeymen leaning close to their surveillance equipment, _watching?_ Sacha shook his discomfort off. _Who cares if they are?_ he asked himself, and resisted the temptation to rearrange the packets of sugar in the dish on the table.

“It’s good to see you again, LEO Grantly,” said the man. He smiled at Sacha, and he tensed slightly. “And LEO Harper, of course.”

Sacha wondered if he meant to surprise him with that, to intimidate him, because of course the Journeymen had access to the LEO grid system. They had access to everything, if you believed it.

“This is Traveller Finch,” Grantly told her. “He is a...” He trailed off.

“Taxation investigator,” Finch finished for him. “If you don’t mind.”

Sacha nodded at the lie, and didn’t believe it for a second. He looked like an accountant, but there was an underlying authority to him that he didn’t even try to hide. If he’d been told he was the Navigator himself, Sacha thought, he wouldn’t have dared laugh at the idea.

“Thank you both for coming,” said Traveller Finch. “I need your help.”

Grantly looked as impassive as always, but Sacha couldn’t help his start of surprise.

Traveller Finch lifted a slim briefcase onto the table, and opened it with a click. He withdrew two documents and slid them across the table. He produced a pen from his shirt pocket. “If you’ll just sign here.”

Sacha looked at the document, and saw that it was the _Official Secrets Act_. He wondered, and not for the first time, what the hell this all had to do with an escaped junkie from the Crewman Quarter.

Grantly signed, and Sacha did the same.

“Thank you,” said Traveller Finch, and returned the documents to his briefcase.

For a moment they sat in silence as the woman returned with their coffees, and then Grantly leaned forward in his chair.  

“I was hoping, sir,” said LEO Grantly in his calm, unruffled voice, “that you could tell me why Davey Macquarie thinks he killed a man who doesn’t exist on the system. A man you say isn’t dead at all.”

Sacha wondered if he was out of his depth here. He wondered if Grantly was as well, and just didn’t know it.

“Well,” said Traveller Finch, stirring his coffee, “I should think that’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Grantly looked at him steadily for a moment. “Daniel Marsden is a Journeyman,” he said at last.

Finch smiled slightly, quickly, and then his lined face was grave again.

“Was,” he said.

Sacha’s throat was dry, but he thought if he reached for his cappuccino his shaking hands would spill it.

Grantly looked unsurprised. “I see. But he’s not dead?”

“No,” said Traveller Finch. “He’s very much alive.”

Regret passed over his amiable features.

Grantly didn’t say anything.

Finch reached into his briefcase again, and drew out a thin folder. He slid it across the table and for a moment his fingers lingered on it as though he was afraid to let it go. He drew his hand back suddenly, and half turned away in his seat.

“See for yourself,” he murmured.

LEO Grantly opened the folder, and began to read, holding the pages so Sacha could see them as well. Traveller Finch watched them quietly.

 

HSO: Have you been having any trouble sleeping?

Marsden: No, not really. Just the usual, from drinking too much coffee.

HSO: And when you sleep, what do you dream about?

Marsden: Nothing, no, I don’t think I do. 

HSO: This has been a very stressful time for you. Have you been drinking more than usual?

Marsden: No. I only drink socially. 

HSO: Have you been using drugs? Prescribed or recreational? Anything you tell me is confidential.

Marsden: No, I haven’t. The last thing the CMO prescribed me was a course of antibiotics when I had the flu, and I don’t see any other doctors. I also don’t use illegal drugs.

HSO: And what about exercise? Are you exercising regularly?

Marsden: Twice a week at the gym.

HSO: How are you coping?

Marsden: I’m ready.  

 

 

LEO Grantly looked up from the report.

“What you can’t hear in that is his sense of humour,” said Traveller Finch. “On the tape it’s there in his voice, but it doesn’t translate at all to paper.”

“I see,” said LEO Grantly.

“Try the next one,” suggested Traveller Finch.

LEO Grantly turned over the page.

 

 

 

Marsden: I never told my father I loved him before he died. Is that the sort of thing you want to hear?

HSO: Do you think that it’s important?

Marsden:  I was thirteen. I loved and hated my father in equal measure. It’s such a common condition that it must be the natural state of things, and if it’s the natural state of things there’s no point in losing sleep over it. [Pause] A figure of speech. I don’t lose sleep over it.

HSO: And yet here we are talking about it.

Marsden:  It was either that or the Freudian issues with my mother. That’s the other great teenage horror, isn’t it, when you realise your mother is a sexual being? Of course I realized it quite early on, when after my father’s death she brought home boyfriends not that much older than me, and I heard them screwing at night. 

HSO: That must have been uncomfortable.

Marsden: Of course. I don’t think I looked her in the eye for two years. And then I grew up and got over myself. Is that all you needed to know?  

 

 

 

“And of course there’s nothing familiar in that,” said Traveller Finch, and the humour, like Daniel Marsden’s, was in his voice.

“Self assured,” said LEO Grantly. “And confrontational.”

Sacha met his worried gaze.

“Yes, that was his entry psych exam,” said Traveller Finch. “He was sixteen at the time, and precocious in the truest sense of the word. He knew that the HSO would go straight for the embarrassing questions, the ones that most teenagers would squirm over, so he beat her to it.”

Grantly looked at the page again.

Sacha heard the bubbling hiss of the coffee machine somewhere behind him, and the clatter of plates. Outside, the people in the street suddenly all looked unreal to him, like watching a puppet theatre. He felt nauseated.

“Watching Daniel Marsden,” said Traveller Finch at last, and the whole tone of his voice had changed, “was like watching a magician. He inhabited his legends. He could become a different person, almost literally. Give him the barest bones of a legend and he’d invent an entire history behind it. And he never faltered.”

Sacha looked at the faded report:  Is that the sort of thing you want to hear?

Finch sighed suddenly. “Macquarie was his best, no question. He drank, he smoked, and to talk with him you’d think he’d been born in Auxiliary. And he inhabited Macquarie long enough to develop a very distinct personality. Macquarie read philosophy. He liked opera. These things he kept to himself, and would certainly never admit to his associates, but they were a hidden dimension. There was artistry in it. His legend had secrets. Irrelevant, but it all adds depth. Do you see?”

_Un bel di vedremo._

“I used to meet him sometimes when he was undercover,” Finch said. “His whole demeanour had changed. His voice, his body language, even his smile. But it was more than that.”

Sacha’s heart beat faster.  

_I’m more than you think._

Grantly ran his fingers down the edge of the paper. 

Finch continued. “I said that he became a different person almost literally. By this I mean that he differentiated even on a physiological level. Macquarie drank. Marsden, rarely. Macquarie smoked a packet a day. Marsden never touched them. Macquarie used to get short-tempered if he ran out of cigarettes, start fiddling, all the little signs of nicotine withdrawal. But as soon as he became Marsden again, it was as though he physically didn’t feel it anymore. I can’t begin to tell you how impressive a thing like that is. It shows a discipline I’ve never seen before, and I doubt I will again.”

“What’s crazy anyhow?” Grantly murmured. 

Sacha reached out and touched the back of his hand. _I’m here, boss._

“Discipline, yes, or perhaps pathology.” Finch paused, and was silent for a long while. At last he smiled slightly to himself, and settled back into his chair. “I met Daniel Marsden when he was sixteen. He was gifted. Very clever, and very aware of it. I told him he was too young to join, and he asked for a chance to prove himself. We set him up in a typical training scenario, expecting him to fail, and, well, it would have been a waste to let him go. He completed his training in the top five percent, against men and women who had ten years on him.”

Grantly thought of the boy again, the golden-haired boy he’d found covered in the blood in his cell the morning after. _I don’t need your fucking sympathy._  

“We tested him every way we knew how,” said Traveller Finch. “He was too young. We sent him a honeytrap, thinking that no sixteen year old boy could resist her. He didn’t resist her, as it happens, but he also didn’t tell her a thing. “Torture, exactly the same. Not a single sound that passed his lips compromised himself, or us."

_Will you arrest them, LEO Grantly, for torture?_

“He was special. He was our best agent, not simply because he was so clever, so resilient, but because he was so young. He was young enough that who would suspect he was a Journeyman? He was an advantage we had to use.”

_I don’t lose sleep over it._

“What happened in the Crewman Quarter was unthinkable,” Finch sighed. “When Harry Dean was killed in the cells, I thought about pulling Daniel out. For all his cleverness he had never acted alone before. And while I knew that Daniel could do it, I had my doubts about Macquarie. Macquarie was so dependant on Roberts. But he made the deal with Leshenko, and led us to Lara Banks. I should have pulled him then, but it was closest we had ever come to Solomon Day. He had made the contact. He only had to infiltrate them. And he was good, LEO Grantly, so very good.”

_I’m more than you think._

“A fortnight before the attack I met him in a bar. I could see the track marks, but that day I was speaking to Marsden, not Macquarie, and it seemed to me that he could switch it off, just like with the cigarettes. I asked him about it and he told me it had been his only in, a calculated risk. I trusted his judgement. He told me they were planning something big, and he hoped to have more details next time we met.” Finch stopped suddenly, and passed his hand across his eyes.

Sacha wondered if it was sorrow.

“Events got ahead of him, I think. By the time he discovered what they were planning, he was almost out of time. We never use the communications network, it’s been hacked before, but he used it that day. A single message: _Suicide Bombings:_ _Officers Level 6. Tomorrow at 1000 hours is Solomon Day._ ”

“Solomon Day?” Grantly asked sharply.

“Not a person at all,” said Finch. “An _event_. And he was the first to know it. The paths that the Journeymen use are not known to most people. They remain secret to this day. He could have simply slipped unnoticed into the walls, but the Day’s men were in lockdown, and to disappear would force them to change their plans, and ruin all his good work. He stayed with them, waiting for an opportunity to slip away later. And that night, Lara mentioned to him that there were _other_ cells, and they were planning simultaneous attacks. She named Production, Engineering, Auxiliary and The Consulate itself.”

_There’s nothing in the walls, son._

“Daniel still had twelve hours to make his way back to the Consulate. He saw his only opportunity to get away, another calculated risk. In a toast to the success of Solomon Day, they shared a hit. He overdosed Banks, and spent the night convincing the others to let him take her to a medical station. Neither of them was personally involved in the attack in any case, and both were trusted, and they allowed it.” Finch paused for a moment. “I don’t know what happened to Banks, but he didn’t take her to a medical station. By then it was dawn. He had four hours to make the climb to the Consulate. The grid was down, a common enough occurrence in the Crewman Quarter, but it meant he would have to physically bring the message back to the Consulate. Daniel had no way of knowing the grid was affected throughout the world.”

_Do you hear the whispering in the walls?_

“The paths of the Journeymen are strange and narrow,” Finch smiled regretfully, “but they are still quicker than the public stairs with their checkpoints and security stations and bottlenecks. He climbed for hours, shaving time by crossing close to the core, and it became apparent that he would make Production or the Consulate, but nowhere else. He made a choice. He chose The Consulate. He was there by 0930. At that time he must have realised that he could not prevent the other attacks, but consoled himself with the knowledge that the Navigator would be saved.”

“I’ve seen the footage,” said LEO Grantly. 

“The attack on The Consulate was more than just a suicide bombing,” Finch nodded. “It was a concerted attack, with assault weapons and incendiaries. Daniel couldn’t have known that. Banks probably hadn’t even known it. The Consulate was breached, but the LEOs fought off the terrorists in the end. It was then that Daniel entered the heart of the Atrium. What he saw there I can’t tell you for sure. I’ve never been inside.”

Sacha shuddered, a strange sense of nausea rising up in his gut. 

Finch exhaled slowly. “By nightfall the grid was up again, and it became apparent that Solomon Day had failed. It was a hollow victory. Auxiliary and Production had been badly hit, with decompressions that had resulted in the loss of thousands of lives. Engineering had taken a lot of damage, but few casualties. The grid was up again, but next to useless thanks to the volume of messages people were trying to pass. It wasn’t until he reached Production that Daniel saw the extent of the damage. He continued on to his flat, and it was empty. He sat there the entire night, and Allegra didn’t come home.”

_Can you hear the music, Allegra?_

“The next morning he returned to the Consulate. He had done his job, I told him. He had done better than anyone could have expected. He had made the right decision.” Finch stirred his coffee again. “I sent him to be debriefed. By that stage it was evident that he was not Daniel Marsden any more. He had become Macquarie. It wasn’t a delusion, as such. He knew very well that Macquarie wasn’t real. It was just a coping mechanism. Daniel Marsden was a true believer, right up until he stepped inside the Atrium. Macquarie would have made the selfish choice. Macquarie would have gone to Production for Allegra’s sake. Daniel Marsden blamed himself, and Macquarie blamed him as well.”

Sacha looked away.

Finch’s spoon scaped the side of the cup. “For six weeks he was under the care of the psychiatrist, and it was obvious that he couldn't be debriefed. The psychiatrist suggested we make him face his delusion. Make him choose. He chose Macquarie.”

Grantley traced a page of the transcript.

Finch paused, and drew his hand across his eyes again. “Well, what could we do? We couldn’t afford to have Davey Macquarie loose in the world, with all the things he knew. We put him down the Rats’ Nest, and frankly I expected that to be the end of the matter. I regretted it, of course, but ultimately he was one more casualty of Solomon Day.”

_Are you selling weapons to Solomon Day?_

Finch’s face spread with a wry smile. “I should have known that if anyone could come back from that, it would have been Macquarie, with all of Marsden’s cleverness, and none of his principles.”  

“I’m more than you think,” murmured LEO Grantly, and looked at the report again:  _Is that all you needed to know?_

Sacha exhaled heavily.

Grantly was silent for a while, and then frowned slightly at Traveller Finch. “So what is it you need our help with?”

Finch’s smile faltered. “In my line of work, LEO Grantly, you don’t get many second chances. No regrets, I tell myself, but it never rings entirely true. I’m not the true believer I pretend I am. I think I know what he saw in the Atrium. Or didn’t.”

Grantly nodded slowly.

“I take my faith where I find it, Grantly,” said Finch. “He’s come back, and I can’t ignore it. I want him to live.”


	18. Chapter 18

Macquarie heard the click of the safety being released, heard it and recognised it, and suddenly he was looking straight down the narrow firing chamber of an LEO issue sidearm. Light dazzled him.

“Don’t move,” said a voice.

Macquarie would have known it sooner had the tone been more gentle.

“Good evening, LEO Grantly,” he smiled into the light, smiled into the sidearm, smiled into oblivion. “You gonna shoot me?”

“Only if you move, son,” said LEO Grantly.

“Fair enough,” said Macquarie, and calculated his chances anyway out of habit.

“Are you high?” Grantly asked him.

Macquarie considered the question, even though his eyes showed it. “I’m on the gentle downward slope, Grantly. Fuck, the quality up here is so much better. I’ve become like an epicure, since you saw me last. It’s not as cheap, but so much better.” 

“It’s never cheap, son,” Grantly reminded him.

“No,” Macquarie agreed with a quick smile. “Probably not.” 

“What are you doing here, son?” Grantly asked him quietly.

“They say you can never go back,” Macquarie said. “That’s true, probably, but there was nowhere else to go. What about you, Grantly? I thought your jurisdiction ended with the Crewman Quarter.”

“I came to find you, son, before you make a mistake,” said Grantly.

“I make lots of those,” said Macquarie. He closed his eyes to shut the light out. “What do you care?”1

“Tell me about the Atrium,” said LEO Grantly quietly, and Macquarie said:

 

 

_What is the Holy of Holies but an empty space? It may signify, but in the end it is just an empty space. No-one still living has ever seen inside the Navigator’s sanctum, because if a man looks on the Holy of Holies it kills him. And it is the empty space the kills him, hollows him out, carves him up, and strips him bare._

_There is no god. No higher power who guides us on our path._

_There’s no journey, There’s no path plotted out among the stars. There’s no Navigator._

_There’s just our failing world and the decaying orbit it’s fallen into._

_There is just empty space, and the lies men made to fill it._

 

Macquarie blinked in the light of Sacha’s torch.

 _He saw nothing,_ Sacha realised suddenly, and it hit him like a punch. _There’s nothing._

His fingers felt numb, and he was afraid he'd drop his torch. 

“The Navigator is a tyrant,” said Macquarie, and a smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “The Navigator is dead.”

“Can’t be both,” said Grantly.

“It is,” said Macquarie, and tilted his head suddenly. “What are you doing on secret ways, Grantly?”

“Looking for you,” answered Grantly.

Macquarie's mouth quirked again. "Like it's the most natural thing in the world."

Sacha's hand shook, and the torchlight bounced off the narrow walls, off the secret ways, off the sharp angles of Macquarie's too-thin face. 

“Hey, LEO Harper,” said Macquarie, staring at him down the torchlight. 

“Hey,” Sacha, and remembered that day in his filthy squat. He’d told himself then he’d shoot him, but there wasn’t any anger left in him. He remembered he’d wondered why anyone would take that first hit. _His only in,_ Traveller Finch had said, and Sacha thought: _He did it for the world_ , and couldn’t hate him for his choices now.

He did it for the world, and he did it for nothing.

Same thing.

 

 

 

 

Macquarie thought: _End of the line._ _Make it count._

“Who showed you the way, Grantly?” he asked.

“Finch,” said Grantly.

“Right,” said Macquarie. He closed his eyes against the light. There was a rush of noise in his head like static, the ocean, a distant barrage, and he realised it was the sound of his breath escaping.  “Right. That’s everything, then.”

He pictured Allegra’s face.

 

 

 

 

Sacha remembered the words scaled on the wall of the filthy squat: _Look her in the eye when you do it._

Sacha wondered fleetingly how he was going to do it. _Grab for the gun,_ he thought. _He’ll grab for the gun and force the boss to shoot him._

“Hey,” he said, and the sureness in his voice surprised him. “I’ve got a joke for you.”

Macquarie hadn’t expected that, and his eyes flickered open again. Sacha angled his torch away so he didn’t blind him, but kept his eyes on the edge of the light. They were brilliant green.

“Did you hear about the bloke who got send up to court for the hundredth time?” Sacha tried to keep hjis voice steady. “And the magistrate says, ‘I thought I told you I never wanted to see you back here again.’”

Macquarie’s green eyes were suspicious and expectant at the same time.

Sacha hoped he knew what he was doing, because beside him he could feel Grantly staring.

Sacha pressed on. “And they bloke says, ‘That’s what I told the LEOs, your honour, but they didn’t listen!’”

Macquarie narrowed his eyes. “That’s the worst joke I ever heard, LEO Harper.”

 

 

 

 _But you listened,_ Daniel Marsden told him, and Macquarie smiled slightly.

_Yeah, I listened._

Sacha forced himself to smile. Macquarie probably couldn’t see it through the torchlight, but he wanted him to hear it in his voice. “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”

Sacha saw the tension drain out of him, and lowered his torch.

Macquarie raised a shaking hand and dragged it through his dirty hair. 

“Do you understand?” he asked quietly, and Sacha heard the intensity in his voice. 

 

 

 

Macquarie thought:

_Does he just see the junkie?_

_Does it matter?_

_Maybe, I don’t know. I think it might._

 

“Yeah,” Sacha told him, feeling his throat ache. “Yeah, I do.”

He saw both his faces.  

 

 

 

_At first she thought she knew him, but her expectant smile faded as she opened the door and saw his was a stranger’s face. Her eyes searched him, and after a moment she placed him._

_“Are you Macquarie?” she asked._

_“Yeah,” he said._

_She studied his face for a long wondrous moment; reached out a hand to touch it, and drew back when he flinched._

_“I’m sorry,” she said, hurt._

_“It’s okay,” he said, and showed her his flash-in-the-pan smile through the regret. “I shouldn’t have come.”_

_He looked at Daniel Marsden’s apartment through envious eyes. He saw books on a shelf, their spines cracked with use. He saw a potted plant with waxy green leaves. He saw a painting on the wall of a faraway place. He saw the open bedroom door, and the bed with the sheets still twisted and rumpled from when Marsden and Allegra last fucked._

_He didn’t deserve her._

_Allegra was still studying his face intently. “You look different than I thought you would. Why is that?”_

_He shrugged._

_She smiled at him._

_“I shouldn’t have come,” he repeated._

Macquarie was empty.

“If there’s no Navigator,” he said slowly, “then where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” said Sacha Harper.

“I’m so sorry,” said Macquarie, and he wasn’t speaking to him anymore. He was speaking to a pale face, chocolate brown hair, and eyes that were full of light. He was speaking to the spare room in the flat in Production that was empty of everything except potential. “Should have kept in the game.”

 

 

_“I’m in charge now,” said Daniel Marsden on the long climb back towards the heart of the world, up through the narrow burning arteries._

_Macquarie was too fucked up to answer let alone argue, so he concentrated instead on putting his feet one after the other on laborious ways._

_“We don’t have much time,” said Daniel Marsden._

_“Time is arbitrary,” Macquarie told him, but it wasn’t, not that day. It was running out for Allegra._

“Should have argued,” said Macquarie now, and closed his eyes again and thought of the funniest joke he’d ever heard:

 

 

_“There you are,” said Macquarie._

_Daniel Marsden jolted with surprise. “Jesus!”_

_“Where?” asked Macquarie, and smiled his gentle mocking smile._

_Daniel ignored it. “We can’t be seen together.”_

_Macquarie’s smile grew. “We won’t be.”_

 

 

 

“Son,” said Grantly, “what are you doing back here?”

Macquarie smiled at the memory of the joke, and then it faded back into the vague, nebulous places in his mind.  “I have to go in. I have to _see_.”

It wasn’t Grantly who answered. It was Finch, standing somewhere outside the light where Macquarie couldn’t see him, and hadn’t known he was there.

“You know better than that.”

Macquarie thought of all his secret ways. Here he was, with only a narrow passageway between the walls that separated him from the Consulate, and he was told he knew better. He did, he knew, but he didn’t need to hear it.

He wanted to go in. He wanted to see the desks, and the carpet, and the little kitchenette in the back corner. He remembered it all so clearly now, so sharp and yet so mundane. Stolen memories from someone else’s life.

He wanted his steps to follow the tracks in the faded blue carpet.

He wanted to see a familiar desk, left tidy, and feel the sting of seeing it made unfamiliar now with someone else’s belongings.

He wanted to walk to the kitchenette, and look though the coffee cups. He imagined he would find the blue one right at the back, dusty and forgotten, with a drawing of a whimsical cow on it.

And there would be a knife in the sink, there usually was, covered in crumbs and cream from someone’s birthday, or just an extravagant morning tea. He would have looked at that knife, narrowed his eyes at it, and then opened his veins with it.

He was owed that much.

“Why the Rats’ Nest?” he asked suddenly. “Jesus, Finch, why that?”

And the worst of it, that nobody would ever know, wasn’t the fetid dark, the stench, or the inhuman thing he was reduced to down there. It was the thin, wailing voice of Splayfingers that carried up to him even when he couldn’t see him anymore: _Wait! Wait!_

Splayfingers, who believed that Macquarie could show him the way to heaven.

There had been too many betrayals, in the end, too many people he’d betrayed.

 _Davey,_ Lara said in a murmur, her translucent arms around his neck. She was as light as a child. _Where are you taking me?_

And he could have said sorry, and thought about it as well from the moment the realisation flashed in her darkening eyes. _Fuck it,_ he’d thought instead, _traitor,_ and held her gaze until she was dead. Couldn’t stop from feeling it though, because whatever else she was she’d loved Davey Macquarie just enough to whisper to him all her secrets.

But the worst betrayal of all was that empty room in the flat in Production, with that hook in the ceiling that was just _waiting_. Still waiting.

He thought, _You and I dreamed great dreams of our future in those days._

“Why that?” he asked again.

“I had no choice,” Finch told him.

“I didn’t deserve that,” said Macquarie and thought: _Setting our feet on undiscovered ways._

“No,” said Finch solemnly, “you didn’t.”

“Didn’t even get a fucking watch like Benyon,” he said.

Finch didn’t say anything.

Macquarie shook his head, too tired now to care.

 _You don’t know the trouble I’ve seen,_ he thought, and then: _And now you never will._ The thought amused him, but the laugh that his body hacked up wasn’t like any sound he had heard before. It snagged in his throat, it rasped, and it sounded more like it belonged to Frenchy from Railroad’s with his forty-a-day habit than on Davey Macquarie, who for all his vices was still only about twenty years old. Or Daniel Marsden, who was twenty-four. _Time,_ he thought, _is mostly_ _arbitrary._

 

 

_He thought:_

Some lives last eighty years, and some are hardly a breath. It was never longevity I wanted, luckily, but fulfilment was another thing, I wanted that. Fulfilment though implies terms, assessment, criteria that need to be met. Fulfilment is only a measure. It is a measure of something, and I don’t know what.

 

 

 

Macquarie mourned the days, to some extent; when he was sharp and fast and untouched by the drug. But for all of that he couldn’t quit, wouldn’t, because it was like he told the preacher: the drug whispered to him all his consolation, and consolation was something that he craved.2He needed consolation for every scar he wore and he had long since lost count of those.

Macquarie used to see God once when he was high, but now he never did. Now he hardly got high enough to lift any distance at all from the world.

Sometimes he mourned his youth, and sometimes he mourned his potential; sometimes he even mourned Daniel Marsden, but never enough to get clean.

 

 

 

_He thought:_

Someone always says of life that you only get the one, and the sentiment is so trite I hate it. And it may even be true, I don’t remember.

 

 

 _Last words,_ he thought, and looked around the passageway, at Grantly and his sidearm, at Sacha Harper and his torch, and at Finch and his lined face. At two worlds that should never have met, but were colliding now, faster and faster with every shuddering breath he drew. He wished he had a cigarette. _You don’t know the trouble I’ve seen, and now you never will._

 

 

 _It can’t end here,_ said Daniel Marsden, _because you won’t have an audience. You get to die alone, remember?_

 

“So does everyone,” said Macquarie, and closed his eyes. He was tired, but for once he didn’t mind.

Was this contentment? In the Rats’ Nest he had fought against his confinement, fought against the dark and the things that wanted to drag him down, but he was tired now of fighting. He was stretched too thin, he had reached the end of the line, and it was a strange sort of peace that settled on him here.

Was it contentment? He couldn’t tell, so he asked the one person who might know.

 

 

 _It’s defeat,_ said Daniel Marsden. _You’re supposed to be a fighter._

 

 

It’s not defeat, Macquarie thought, remembering the words he’d written on the wall of his filthy squat: _Navigator. God. Lamplight._ He thought, _It’s_ transcendence. _This might be my moment of Zen-like enlightenment, Marsden. Don’t fuck it up for me._

They both laughed at that, who’d never really seen eye to eye before. Macquarie looked again at the narrow wall that separated him from the Consulate, from his past, from Daniel Marsden.

Grantly saw the direction of his gaze, and reached out and took his arm to draw him away. “Come on, son,” he said. “Come on.”

“You can never go back,” Macquarie told him.

“No,” agreed Grantly.

Sacha Harper took his other arm.

Macquarie listened in his head for Marsden. He titled his head to listen, and there was nothing. Silence.

Macquarie looked at Finch. “Tell Ruth I said goodbye.”

“Yes,” murmured Finch, and Macquarie remembered suddenly that he didn’t hate him.    

Macquarie felt his perspective shift so suddenly he fought to keep his balance. Maybe a part of it was still the drug but most of it, he knew now, was himself.

Finch was talking to LEO Grantly. Talking in a low and urgent voice, and Grantly was nodding.

“You gonna throw me down the Rats’ Nest again?” asked Macquarie.

He only heard words, as fragmented and disconnected as those he’d written on the wall of the squat a lifetime ago in the Crewman Quarter _: Go. Take him. Never here._  

“You selling us out again, Finch?” he asked curiously.  

“No, you did that yourself,” said Finch. “Marsden or Macquarie. You chose.”

“I fucked up,” said Macquarie, and rubbed his temples. “I did, or _he_ did, or something. Fuck!”

“Come on now,” said Grantly, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you hear me, son?”

“What?” Macquarie felt like he was slipping. “What?”

“Come on, son,” said LEO Grantly. “Come with us, Daniel.”

“Oh, god,” he said as he heard the sound, the sonorous tone, and then the name that suddenly fitted, and felt the ground drop away beneath him. “Oh, fuck. Where are you taking me, Grantly?”

It was Sacha Harper who answered him. “We’re taking you home.”

His touch on his arm was gentle, solicitous, and Macquarie didn't deserve that, never had, but maybe Daniel Marsden did. 

“Wait a minute,” said Macquarie. “I can still hear him.”

It was Daniel Marsden’s voice, and it wasn’t acerbic. It wasn’t sarcastic. It was tired, and it was frightened.

 _Are we okay now, Macquarie?_ it asked. _Are we?_

“Dunno,” murmured Macquarie. "Don't fucking know anything." 

But he let Grantly and Harper draw him slowly back out into the world.  

Maybe if he listened carefully, there would be music there. 

 

* * *

 

 

1I’m trying to help you, son.

 

2And because he knew that battle would be too big for him, and he’d always told himself to pick his fights. If he didn’t start it he couldn’t lose it.


End file.
